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r^  OC 


Philosophies  Ancient  and  Modern 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL 
REALISM 


PHILOSOPHIES 

ANCIENT  AND  MODERN 

Presenting  the  salient  features  of  the  Philosophies  of 

Greece  and  Rome  and  of  the  Middle  Ages, 

as  well  as  of  modern  Europe. 

Cloth,  50  cents  net. 

Early  Greek  Philosopliy.     By  A.  W.  Benn,  author  of  The  Philo- 
sophy oj  Greece,  Rationalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

Stoicism.      By    Professor    St.    George    Stock,    Lecturer    at 
Birmingham  University. 

Plato.     By  Professor  A.  E.  Taylor,  St.  Andrews  University, 
author  of  The  Problem  of  Gonduct. 

Scholasticism.    By  Father  Rickaby,  S.J. 

Hobbes.     By  Professor  A.  E.  Taylor,  late  Professor  at  M'Gill 
College,  Montreal. 

Locke.     By  Professor   Alexander,  of   Owens   College,  Man- 
chester. 

Comte   and    Mill.      By  T.    W.    Whittaker,  author   of   The 
Neoplatonists,  Apollonius  of  Tyana  and  other  Essays. 

Herbert  Spencer.    By  W.   H.   Hudson,  author  ol  An  Intro- 
dxiction  to  Spencer's  Philosophy. 

Schopenhauer.    By  T.  W.  Whittaker. 

Berkeley.     By  Professor  Campbell  Fraser,  D.  C.L.,  LL.D. 

Bergson.     By  Father  Tyrrell. 

Lucretius  and  the  Atomists.    By  Edward  Clodd,  author  of 

The  Story  of  the  Creation. 


BERKELEY    AND 
SPIRITUAL   REALISM 


By 
ALEXANDER  CAMPBELL  FRASER 

HON.  D.C.L.  oxford;    fellow  of  the  BRITISH  ACADEMY;    PROFESSOR 

(emeritus)   of  logic  and  METAPHYSICS  IN  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  EDINBURGH 


NEW    YORK 
DODGE   PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

214-220    EAST    23RD    STREET 


FOREWOED 

Spinoza  and  Berkeley:  a  coincidence. — Among 
modern  philosophers  Spinoza  and  Berkeley  rank 
together  in  the  manner  of  their  reception.  For 
more  than  a  century  after  they  died  both  were 
misinterpreted  or  neglected.  Within  the  last 
century  each  in  his  way  has  become  an  influential 
factor  in  the  excitement  and  formation  of  philo- 
sophical thought. 

Both  tardily  recognised. — Spinoza  died  in 
1677,  and  for  more  than  a  hundred  years  after 
was  vaguely  regarded  as  an  impious  atheist,  under 
the  ban  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  authority. 
Berkeley  died  in  1753,  and  for  a  century  was 
ridiculed  as  an  eccentric  visionary,  who  denied 
the  reality  of  the  earth  on  which  he  trod,  and  of 
the  human  beings  by  whom  he  was  surrounded. 

Each  now  an  influential  philosophical  factor. 
— To-day  the  contemplative  reverence  of  Spinoza's 
temper  is  freely  acknowledged,  and  his  works  are 
accepted  as  classics  in  the  philosophical  litera- 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

ture  of  Europe,  the  productions  of  one  who 
devoted  his  short  life  to  reasoned  meditation 
about  God,  or  the  Universe  which  he  identified 
with  God.  And  the  philosophy  of  Berkeley  is 
now  interpreted  as  a  serious  endeavour  to  vindi- 
cate the  ultimate  spirituality  of  the  universe,  and 
the  moral  or  supernatural  agency  constantly  at 
work  in  nature.  Within  the  last  forty  years  (in 
1871  and  1901)  two  large  editions  of  his  Collected 
Works  have  issued  from  the  Oxford  Clarendon 
Press,  besides  about  ten  thousand  copies  of  anno- 
tated '  Selections  from  Berkeley,'  much  used  as 
a  text-book  in  the  colleges  and  universities  of 
Britain  and  America.  Within  the  same  period, 
too,  Berkeley  has  been  the  subject  of  numerous 
criticisms  in  the  periodical  literature  of  France, 
Italy,  Germany,  and  America,  as  well  as  in  this 
country. 

Questions  common  to  both,  but  diflferently 
answered  by  each.— Spinoza  and  Berkeley  had 
this  in  common,  that  they  found  their  supreme 
interest  in  the  final  problem  of  the  universe  into 
which  we  are  all  ushered  as  strangers  at  birth, 
and  in  which  we  now  find  ourselves  transitory 
visitors,  trying  to  forecast  our  final  destiny.  Is 
Matter  or  Mind,  Body  or  Spirit,  or  Something 
that  transcends  both,  at  the  root  of  all  ?  Is  the 
vi 


FOREWORD 

Reality  with  which  we  have  constantly  to  do 
blind,  uninterpretable,  meaningless;  or  is  it  the 
revelation  of  perfect  reason  and  goodness  ?  Is 
the  world,  underneath  its  continuous  transforma- 
tions, a  settled  Cosmos,  and  thus  trustworthy  and 
interpretable ;  or  is  it  ultimately  a  Chaos,  which 
for  a  time  takes  the  appearance  of  Cosmos,  but 
which  may  become  a  chaotic  enigma,  unfit  to 
yield  science,  or  to  enable  us  to  regulate  our 
actions  for  the  benefit  of  life  ?  Must  I  regard 
myself  as  a  transitory  bubble  on  the  endless 
stream,  or  as  destined  for  continuous  personal 
or  morally  responsible  life,  after  this  embodied 
self  loses  its  present  embodiment  in  death  ? 
Is  Pessimism  or  Optimism  the  final  goal  of 
the  evolution  in  which  I  find  my  embodied  self 
involved  ? 

To  which  this  Age  is  more  alive  than  any 
preceding  one. — These  are  questions  to  which 
this  age  has  become  more  awake  than  any  pre- 
ceding one ;  which  may  account  for  its  being 
attracted,  at  opposite  poles,  by  the  Pantheistic 
reasonings  of  Spinoza  and  the  Spiritual  Realism 
cf  Berkeley.  Spinoza  in  his  final  Unity  finds 
God  in  the  evil  as  well  as  in  the  good,  in  the 
lives  of  Caligula  and  Borgia  as  much  as  in 
the  lives  of  the  wisest  or  holiest  of  mankind, 
vii 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

Berkeley,  on  the  other  hand,  less  adventurous 
intellectually,  accepts  in  faith  the  fact  of  man's 
independent  power  to  make  himself  wicked,  and 
thus  refers  to  the  man  himself,  apart  from  God, 
the  evil  acts  of  which  man  accordingly  is  the 
creator. 

Can  they  be  disposed  of  in  science  of  nature 
alone  ? — Is  a  final  settlement  of  these  questions 
to  be  looked  for  in  a  scientific  study  of  nature 
and  so-called  natural  causes?  Can  they  be  dis- 
posed of  (positively  or  negatively)  by  observation 
and  physical  induction  ?  or  is  spiritual  insight, 
under  necessary  presuppositions  of  reason,  re- 
quired? In  short,  is  the  true  philosophy  Material- 
ism or  Spiritual  Realism  ? 

Materialism  and  Spiritual  Realism. — Berke- 
ley's Realism  belongs  to  one  of  the  two  forms, 
which  philosophy  has  been  apt  to  assume  from 
the  beginning  ; — the  shallower,  which  stops  short 
amidst  the  visible  and  tangible  phenomena  of 
the  material  world  and  their  laws;  and  the 
deeper,  which  is  dissatisfied  till  it  reaches  the 
spiritual  Avorld,  on  which  physical  phenomena 
depend,  and  from  which  they  derive  their  scien- 
tific significance.  He  thus  contrasts  them  : — 
'  There  are  two  sorts  of  philosophers.  The  one 
placed  Body  first  in  the  order  of  things,  and 
viii 


FOREWORD 

made  the  faculty  of  thinking  depend  there- 
upon ;  supposing  that  the  principles  of  all  things 
are  corporeal ;  that  Body  most  really  or  prin- 
cipally exists,  and  all  other  things  in  a  secondary 
sense  and  by  virtue  of  that.  Others,  making 
all  corporeal  things  to  be  dependent  upon  Soul  or 
Mind,  think  this  to  exist  in  the  first  place  and 
primary  sense,  and  the  being  of  bodies  to  be 
altogether  derived  from,  and  presuppose  that  of 
Spirit  or  Mind.'  ^ 

The  Sequel. — The  ground  in  reason,  and  the 
moral  implicates  of  the  second  of  those  philoso- 
phies are  presented  for  critical  consideration  in 
the  following  chapters ;  but  perhaps  this  was  a 
presumptuous  undertaking  for  one  in  his  nine- 
tieth year. 

^  Siris,  sec.  263. 
October  1908. 


IX 


CONTENTS 


FAOK 


I.  Berkeley, 1 

II.  The  Material  World  and  its  Natural  Order,   17 

III.  The  Human  World  and  Moral  Disorder,         .     45 

IV.  God,  or    the    Universal    Mind,   and   Theistic 

Optimism, 62 

A  Short   List   of  Books  bearing  on  the  Sub- 
ject,     85 

Dates  in  the  Life  of  Berkeley,        .        .        .86 


XI 


BERKELEY  AND   SPIRITUAL 
REALISM 

CHAPTER    I 

BERKELEY 

Berkeley's  Place  in  the  Modern  Philosophical 
Movement. — John  Locke,  George  Berkeley,  and 
David  Hume  were  in  their  times  the  leading 
representatives  of  European  philosophy.  England 
was  represented  by  the  cautious  and  sagacious 
Locke,  watchful  of  the  limits  of  human  know- 
ledge ;  Ireland  by  Berkeley,  the  subtle  spiritual 
realist,  with  his  finally  moral  and  religious  con- 
ception of  the  universe ;  and  Scotland  by  Hume, 
the  agnostic  critic  of  the  supernatural.  Locke's 
Essay  or  book  of  ideas  belongs  to  the  seven- 
teenth century ;  the  earlier  part  of  the  eighteenth 
was  illuminated  by  Berkeley ;  and  its  later  years 
were  stimulated  intellectually  by  Hume.  Prior  to 
this  memorable  trio,  the  philosophic  centre  had 
A  I 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

been  in  France,  under  Descartes  and  Malebranche, 
and  with  Spinoza  in  Holland;  after  Hume,  but 
by  reaction,  the  centre  shifted  from  Britain  to 
Germany  under  Kant  and  Hegel,  and  Lotze,  the 
successors  of  Leibniz. 

Berkeley's  Personality. — In  personal  charm, 
spiritual  fervour,  benevolent  activity,  pleasing 
imagination,  and  graceful  literary  expression,  all 
combined,  Berkeley  is  a  prince  among  philo- 
sophers and  philanthropists.  His  subtle  thought 
evoked  the  sceptical  intelligence  of  Hume,  and 
his  ardent  human  interest  made  the  social 
economy  of  Ireland,  and  the  Christian  civilisa- 
tion of  the  world  beyond  the  Atlantic  inspiring 
ideals  in  his  life. 

Kilkenny  and  Trinity  College,  Dublin.— The 
record  of  his  opening  years  is  scanty.  We  know 
that  he  was  born  in  the  county  of  Kilkenny  in 
1685,  and  that  he  was  trained  in  the  local 
academy  at  Kilkenny.  At  the  age  of  fifteen  he 
entered  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  where  he  gradu- 
ated in  1704,  the  year  in  which  Locke  died.  Three 
years  later  he  was  admitted  to  a  Fellowship  with 
high  distinction  in  Mathematics  and  Philosophy, 
and  afterwards  took  orders  in  the  Irish  Church. 

Inspired  by  a  new  Far-reaching  Thought.— 
When    hardly   twenty,   a  new  and   far-reaching 

2 


BERKELEY 

thought  about  the  material  world,  and  what  its 
reality  means,  had  somehow  taken  possession  of 
him.  His  'Commonplace  Book,'  first  published 
in  my  Life  and  Letters  of  Berkeley  in  1871,  is  a 
striking  revelation  of  his  singular  state  of  mind, 
between  the  age  of  nineteen  and  twenty-four — 
fervid  hostility  to  empty  abstractions,  about  which 
philosophers  were  apt  to  busy  themselves,  and 
reaction  in  favour  of  concrete  realities  and  living 
experience.  Through  its  pages  he  is  under  the 
inspiration  of  this  far-reaching  thought,  anon 
calling  forth  flashes  of  philosophical  enthusiasm. 
It  is  constantly  referred  to  by  Berkeley  as  the 
way  of  escape  from  sceptical  despair,  and  as 
what,  notwithstanding  the  misunderstanding  and 
opposition  it  was  sure  to  encounter,  he  was 
resolved  to  press  upon  the  world  with  all  con- 
venient speed. 

This  Thought  pervades  the  'Commonplace 
Book '  of  his  Youth. — Here  are  a  few  sentences, 
like  many  others  in  the  '  Commonplace  Book ' : 
'  The  reverse  of  the  Principle  I  take  to  have  been 
the  chief  source  of  all  that  scepticism  and  foUy, 
all  those  contradictory  and  inexplicable  puzzling 
absurdities  that  have  in  all  ages  been  a  reproach 
to  human  reason.  I  know  there  is  a  mighty 
sect  of  men  wlio  will  oppose  me.     I  am  young,  I 

3 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

am  an  upstart,  I  am  vain.  Very  well,  I  will 
patiently  bear  up  under  the  most  lessening, 
vilifying  appellations  the  pride  and  rage  of  man 
can  devise.  One  thing  I  am  not  guilty  of.  I  do 
not  pin  my  faith  on  the  sleeve  of  any  great  man. 
.  .  .  'Tis  on  the  discovery  of  the  nature  and  mean- 
ing of  Existence  that  I  chiefly  insist.  This  puts 
the  wide  difference  between  the  sceptics  and  me. 
This  I  think  wholly  new.  I  am  sure  it  is  new 
in  me.  ...  I  take  not  away  Substances.  I  only 
reject  the  philosophic  sense,  which  is  in  effect 
nonsense,  of  the  word  Substance.  Ask  a  man 
not  tainted  with  philosophic  jargon,  what  he 
means  by  Corporeal  Substance.  He  shall  answer, 
bulk,  solidity,  and  such  like  sensible  qualities. 
These  I  retain.  The  'p^^'i^osophic  Substance,  of 
which  I  have  no  idea,  I  discard;  if  a  man  may 
be  said  to  discard  that  which  never  had  any 
being,  was  never  so  much  as  imagined. ...  I  know 
not  what  they  mean  by  "  things  considered  in 
themselves."  This  is  nonsense,  jargon.  .  .  .  Thing 
and  idea  are  much  words  of  the  same  extent 
and  meaning.  By  idea  I  mean  any  sensible 
or  imaginable  thing.  .  .  .  Real  existence  is  not 
conceivable  without  perception  and  volition. 
Existence  is  perceiving  and  willing,  or  being 
perceived   and  willed.  ...   I   am    the    farthest 

4 


BERKELEY 

from  scepticism  of  any  man.  I  know  with  an 
intuitive  knowledge  tlie  existence  of  other  things 
as  well  as  my  own  soul.  The  chief  thing  I  pre- 
tend to  do  is  only  to  remove  the  mist  or  veil 
of  words.' 1  In  short,  if  men  would  lay  aside 
abstract  words  and  betake  themselves  to  real 
ideas,  they  could  not  err,  unless  by  misinter- 
preting the  real  ideas  actually  present  to  their 
senses. 

Presented  to  the  World  in  *  Essay  on  Vision,* 
'  Principles,'  and  *  Dialogues  '  (1709-13).— Berke- 
ley hastened  to  give  the  world  the  pregnant 
thought  which  thus  early  inspired  him.  He 
restrained  himself,  however,  so  far  as  to  pro- 
pose it  at  first  only  in  one  of  its  applications. 
The  eye,  the  hand,  and  the  organs  of  locomotion 
are  our  chief  media  of  intercourse  with  the  ma- 
terial world  outside  our  own  bodies.  That  we 
cannot  see  anything  not  in  contact  with  the 
organ  of  seeing,  and  that  all  at  any  distance 
from  the  eye  is  not  actually  seen,  but  only 
signified  by  what  is  seen,  is  the  governing 
thought  of  his  Essay  towards  a  Neiu  Tlceory  oj 
Vision^  in  which  he  made  his  first  appearance 
as  a  philosopher  in  1709.  This  explanation  of 
seeing  was  followed  in  1710  by  the  Principles  of 

1  See  Life  and  Letters  of  Berkeley,  pp.  30-33. 

5 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

Human  Knowledge,  in  which  the  chief  causes  of 
error  and  difficulty  in  the  sciences  and  the  grounds 
of  scepticism  are  inquired  into,  not  as  in  the  eye 
alone,  but  in  all  the  five  senses.  The  whole 
material  world  is  presented  as  a  system  of  mind- 
dependent  sensible  signs,  in  a  measure  interpret- 
able  by  man,  and  which  men  are  more  or  less  able 
to  turn  to  their  own  uses.  The  Spiritual  Realism, 
argued  for  in  the  Principles,  was  presented  anew 
in  1713  in  Three  Dialogues,  which  revive  Plato 
and  Cicero  in  modern  philosophy.  They  recom- 
mend the  new  conception  of  the  reality  of  the 
material  world  to  readers  who  might  be  repelled 
by  its  less  lively  presentation  in  the  Principles. 
These  three  books  are  the  unprecedented  achieve- 
ment of  a  youth  between  his  twenty-fourth  and 
his  twenty-eighth  year. 

Leaves  Trinity  College  to  see  the  World. — 
The  continuous  philosophical  strain  at  Trinity 
College  made  relaxation  and  change  of  scene 
needful.  The  retired  thinker  was  now  to  mix 
with  the  world.  Soon  after  the  appearance  of 
the  Dialogues,  a  Queen's  Letter  to  the  Provost 
of  Trinity  tells  how  'humble  suit  having  been 
made  on  behalf  of  our  trusty  and  well-beloved 
George  Berkeley,  one  of  the  Junior  Fellows  of 
that  our  College,  that  we  would  give  him  leave 

6 


BERKELEY 

to  travel  and  remain  abroad  during  the  space 
of  two  years,  for  the  recovery  of  his  health  and 
his  improvement  in  learning,  we  have  thought 
fit  to  dispense  with  the  articles  of  residence  on 
his  behalf.  The  two  years'  leave  of  absence  was  in 
the  end  extended  to  seven,  and  for  twenty  years 
after  the  date  of  the  Queen's  Letter,  Berkeley's 
visits  to  Ireland  were  infrequent.  His  middle  life 
was  devoted  to  philanthropic  enterprise  more  than 
to  philosophical  ideas. 

In  London  and  Italy  (1713-20).— Berkeley's 
first  social  experience  away  from  Dublin  was 
among  the  brilliant  circles  in  London  that  made 
the  reign  of  Anne  illustrious  in  the  history  of 
English  literature.  Introduced  by  Swift  to  Addi- 1 
son  and  Steele  and  Pope,  the  youthful  author  of  I 
the  Dialogues  was  a  favourite  in  London  coffee- 
houses and  saloons  in  1713.  In  the  folloAving 
year  he  found  his  way  to  Italy,  where  he  lingered 
for  some  years,  amidst  scenes  congenial  to  one 
attracted  to  art  by  the  associations  of  history,  and 
already  enriched  by  ancient  learning.  A  record 
of  his  movements  during  some  of  those  years  is 
contained  in  the  'Journal  of  a  Tour  in  Italy,' 
first  published  in  the  Life  and  Letters  of 
Berkeley. 

7 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

Publication  of  'De  Motu.  — He  returned  to 
Ireland  in  1721.  During  this  prolonged  absence 
the  'New  Principle'  was  not  forgotten.  One 
of  his  resting-places  on  his  way  home  was  at 
Lyons.  There  he  prepared  a  Latin  Essay  on 
Causation,  entitled  De  Motu,  which  was  pub- 
lished soon  after  he  reached  London.  It  insists 
that  spiritual  agency,  human  and  divine,  is 
the  only  efficient  and  final  cause  of  motion 
in  the  material  world.  This  is  an  application 
to  the  phenomena  of  motion  of  the  thought 
that  inspired  Berkeley  when  he  was  hardly 
twenty. 

A  Philanthropic  Project. — Soon  after  his  return 
to  Ireland  we  find  him  somehow  possessed  by  the 
philanthropic  inspiration  which  shaped  his  life 
during  the  next  ten  years.  The  philosopher  be- 
came the  philanthropic  missionary  of  Christian 
civilisation  in  America,  ready  to  sacrifice  for  this 
ideal  the  social  attractions  of  the  Old  World  in 
which  he  had  grown  into  middle  life.  His  official 
connection  with  Trinity  College  ended  in  1724, 
when  he  was  made  Dean  of  Derry,  one  of  the  most 
valuable  appointments  in  the  Irish  Church.  But 
the  American  project  carried  him  in  the  same 
year  to  London,  ready  to  resign  the  Deanery  in  its 
behalf.      It  had   been   much   in    his   mind   for 

8 


BERKELEY 

three  years.  ^  Dean  Swift  thus  described  the  case 
in  a  letter  to  Lord  Carteret,  then  the  Irish  Lord 
Lieutenant : — '  There  is  a  gentleman  of  this  king- 
dom just  gone  for  England.  It  is  Dr.  George 
Berkeley,  Dean  of  Derry.  He  was  a  Fellow  of  the 
University  here;  and  going  to  England  very 
young,  about  thirteen  years  ago,  he  became  the 
founder  of  a  sect  called  the  Immaterialists,  by  the 
force  of  a  very  curious  book  upon  that  subject. 
I  am  now  to  mention  his  errand.  He  is  an  abso- 
lute philosopher  with  regard  to  money,  titles,  and 
power ;  and  for  three  years  past  has  been  struck 
with  a  notion  of  founding  a  university  at  Bermu- 
das, by  a  charter  from  the  Crown.  He  showed 
me  a  little  tract  which  he  designs  to  publish;  and 
there  your  Excellency  will  see  his  whole  scheme 
i  of  a  life  academico-philosophical,  of  a  College  for 
j Indian  scholars  and  missionaries  ;  Avhere  he  most 
exorbitantly  proposes  a  whole  hundred  pounds 
a  year  for  himself.  His  heart  will  break  if  his 
Deanery  be  not  taken  from  him.  I  discouraged 
him  by  the  coldness  of  courts  and  ministers  ;  but 
nothing  will  do.  And  therefore  I  humbly  entreat 
your  Excellency  either  to  use  such  persuasions  as 
will  keep  one  of  the  first  men  in  the  kingdom  for 

^  In  1724  he  published  a  '  Proposal '  to  erect  a  College  in 
the  Isles  of  Bermuda,  '  for  converting  the  savage  Americans  to 
Christianity,' 

9 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

learning  and  virtue,  quiet  at  home,  or  assist  liim 
by  your  credit  to  compass  his  romantic  design ; 
which,  however,  is  very  noble  and  generous.'  ^ 

A  College  at  Bermuda. — After  years  of  anxious 
negotiation  in  London,  where  he  experienced  '  the 
coldness  of  courts  and  ministers,'  of  which  Swift 
had  warned  him,  Berkeley,  with  his  newly-married 
wife,  sailed  on  his  way  to  Bermuda,  in  the  faith  of 
a  supposed  promise  by  Sir  Robert  Walpole  of  a 
charter,  and  financial  help  for  the  proposed  college 
there,  which  was  to  be  a  fountain  of  Christian 
civilisation  for  the  vast  Indian  population  of 
North  America. 

Berkeley  in  Rhode  Island.— He  halted  on  his 
way  for  two  years  in  Rhode  Island,  waiting  there 
in  vain  for  the  charter  and  the  grant;  but  he 
never  saw  Bermuda.  He  had  been  deluded  by 
the  fair  words  of  the  minister.  )Yet  he  was  not 
idle  in  Rhode  Island.  He  bought  a  little  farm 
and  built  a  house  in  a  pleasant  valley  in  the 
interior  of  the  island,  and  there  resumed  the 
studies  of  his  early  years. 

American  Samuel  Johnson. — Congenial  society 
was  not  wanting.     Soon  after  his  arrival  he  was 
visited  by  the   Reverend   Samuel  Johnson,  dis- 
tinguished along  with  Jonathan  Edwards  as  one 
1  Lift  and  Letters  of  Berkeley,  pp.  102-3. 
lO 


BERKELEY 

of  the  two  representatives  of  early  American 
philosophy.  Berkeley's  letters  to  Johnson^  are 
explanations  of  disputed  points  in  his  spiritual 
realism,  to  which  Johnson  was  converted,  and 
afterwards  defended  in  his  own  works,  in  a  man- 
ner that  entitles  him  to  an  eminent  place  among 
American  thinkers. 

Fruits  of  Study  in  Rhode  Island :  '  Alciphron ' 
and  'Theory  of  Visual  Language'  (1732-3).— 
Some  fruits  of  Berkeley's  studies  in  the  secluded 
American  valley  were  given  to  the  world  in 
1732,  immediately  after  his  return  to  England. 
Alciphron,  or  tlte  Minute  Philosopher,  made  its 
appearance  in  March  of  that  year.  In  the  form 
of  Dialogues  he  criticised  the  prevailing  material- 
ism, and  presented  his  spiritual  philosophy  in 
aspects  fitted  to  restore  faith  in  the  omnipresence 
of  Omnipotent  Spirit,  in  the  moral  order  of  the 
universe,  and  in  the  Christian  revelation  of  God. 
Of  the  seven  Dialogues,  the  fourth  and  the  last 
are  probably  the  most  interesting.  The  former 
expands  the  visual  symbolism  of  Berkeley's 
juvenile  Essay  on  Seeing  into  a  universal 
sense  symbolism,  which  recognises  in  the  ordered 
sequences  of  the  material  world  the  language 
of  the  Omnipotent  Spirit  in  whom  we  live  and 

^  Life  and  LcUers  of  Berkeley,  pp.  175-81. 
II 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

have  our  being.  A  hostile  critic  moved  Berkeley 
to  reply.  The  Theory  of  Visual  Language,  show- 
ing the  imviediate  Presence  and  Providence  of 
a  Deity,  Vindicated  and  Explained,  appeared 
early  in  1733,  in  answer  to  strictures  on  the 
Fourth  Dialogue  in  Alciphron. 

Bishop  of  Cloyne. — Berkeley's  wanderings  in 
Europe  and  America  during  middle  life  were  now 
ended.  Two  years  after  the  return  from  a  mission 
in  which  he  had  embarked  with  so  much  enthu- 
siasm, he  was  made  Bishop  of  Cloyne,  through 
the  influence,  as  it  seems,  of  the  philosophic 
Queen  Caroline,  and  perhaps  with  some  regard  to 
what  was  due  on  account  of  the  disillusion  of 
the  American  vision.  This  remote  diocese  in  the 
south  of  Ireland  was  his  home  for  twenty  years. 
His  cherished  hopes  had  faded.  The  ideal  of 
America  in  the  future,  civilised  and  Christianised, 
was  dissolved.  In  his  remaining  years  signs  of 
chastened  enthusiasm  and  failing  health  abound. 
Still  he  resumed  at  Cloyne  the  work  which 
cheered  the  recluse  life  at  Rhode  Island  and 
inspired  him  in  far-off  years  at  Trinity  College ; 
now  in  a  more  meditative  temper,  less  contro- 
versial, more  disposed  to  lean  for  support  upon 
illustrious    philosophers    of   the    ancient    world, 

12 


BERKELEY 

above  all  on  Plato  and  Aristotle,  Plotinus  and 
Proclus. 

'  The  Querist '  and  the  Social  State  of  Ireland 
(1735-37). — Berkeley's  temper  was  too  human 
and  philanthropic  for  indulgence  in  merely 
contemjDlative  thought.  He  was  once  more  in 
his  native  country  after  a  long  absence.  Ireland 
took  the  place  of  America.  Industrious  self- 
reliance  was  lacking  among  Irishmen,  and  his 
own  fiivourite  motto  was  '  non  sibi  sed  toti.'  The 
crisis  was  the  occasion  of  what  some  may 
consider  the  most  useful  of  his  books.  It  took 
the  form  of  questions,  five  hundred  and  ninetv- 
five  in  number.  The  first  instalment  of  The 
Querist  appeared  in  1735,  and  the  last  in  1737. 
The  sympathy  of  the  Protestant  bishop  was  not 
confined  to  the  English  colony  of  Protestants. 
It  included  all  classes  of  his  countrymen.  He 
asked  'whether  a  scheme  for  the  welfare  of 
Ireland  should  not  take  in  the  whole  inhabitants ' ; 
and  '  whether  it  was  not  "  a  vain  "  attempt  to  pro- 
ject the  flourishing  of  our  Protestant  gentry  exclu- 
sive of  the  bulk  of  the  natives.'  He  engaged  the 
co-operation  of  the  Roman  communion  by  a  letter 
to  their  clergy,  asking  for  their  help  in  trying 
to  induce  Irishmen  to  be  industrious. 

*  Siris '  and  the  Medical  Virtues  of  Tar- water. 
13 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

— Some  of  his  early  years  at  Cloyne  were  years 
of  famine  and  disease.  This  reminded  him  of 
American  experience  of  the  virtues  of  tar- water. 
He  became  the  ardent  apostle  of  this  medicine, 
and  connected  it  by  curious  links  with  his  spiritual 
idealism.  Contemplating  the  beneficence  of  tar- 
water,  he  was  led  by  subtle  associations  to  the 
constitution  of  the  whole  material  world  of  which 
tar  was  a  part;  and  thence  to  the  efficient  and 
final  cause  of  a  universe  in  which  everything  is 
connected  with  everything  else,  through  the 
Omnipotent  Spirit  in  Whom  the  Whole  has  its 
being.  Although  such  '  phantoms  '  as  '  corporeal 
forces '  pass  in  the  natural  sciences  as  true  causes, 
and  are  supposed  by  some  to  explain  every- 
thing, yet  in  truth  they  explain  nothing,  for  all 
true  explanation  lies  deeper.  It  is  found  in 
Spirit  or  Mind,  not  in  impotent  corporeal 
things;  while  all  corporeal  things  depend  on 
Spirit ;  this  containing,  connecting,  enlivening  the 
entire  material  frame,  so  that  those  things  which 
before  seemed  to  constitute  the  whole  of  exist- 
ence, prove  to  be  but  fleeting  phantoms.  Such  is 
the  spirit  of  Shns,  Berkeley's  last  addition  to  the 
literature  of  philosophy,  described  as  '  a  chain  of 
philosophical  reflections  and  inquiries  concerning 
the  virtues  of  tar-water,  and  divers  other  subjects 

14 


BERKELEY 

connected  together  and  arising  out  of  one  another.' 
It  was  his  legacy  to  the  world  in  1744. 

Old  Age  and  Death  in  Oxford. — A  period  of 
declining  health  followed.  'I  submit  to  years 
and  infirmity,'  he  writes  to  Dean  Gervais  in  1752. 
'  My  views  in  this  world  are  mean  and  narrow ; 
it  is  a  thinof  in  which  I  have  small  share,  and 
which  ought  to  give  me  small  concern.  The 
evening  of  life  I  choose  to  pass  in  a  quiet  retreat. 
Ambitious  projects,  intrigues  and  quarrels  of 
statesmen,  are  things  I  have  formerly  been  amused 
with,  but  now  they  seem  to  be  a  vain  fugitive 
dream.'  He  had  long  been  possessed  by  a  roman- 
tic desire  to  end  his  days  in  Oxford.  The  time 
was  now  come.  In  the  summer  of  1752  he  found 
his  home  in  the  historic  city  of  colleges.  He  was 
not  permitted  to  enjoy  it  long.  On  a  Sunday  in 
January  1753,  surrounded  by  his  family,  he  was 
suddenly  overtaken  by  the  mystery  of  death,  and 
the  material  world,  about  which  he  had  speculated 
so  long,  ceased  to  be  his  medium  of  intercourse 
with  his  fellow-men. 

Berkeley's  Modest  Estimate  of  his  own  Philo- 
sophy. —  In  the  seven  philosophical  tractates 
already  mentioned  —  three  issued  in  sanguine 
impetuous  youth,  three  others  in  active  middle 

15 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

life,  and  the  last  in  contemplative  old  age 
—  Berkeley  has  unfolded  and  applied  the 
Spiritual  Realism  of  which  he  is  an  illustrious 
modern  representative.  He  recognised  how  apt 
his  conception  of  the  material  world  is  to  be  mis- 
interpreted, and  he  renounced  all  claim  to  a  fully 
elaborated  philosophy.  '  I  do  not  indeed  wonder,' 
he  tells  his  American  friend  Johnson,  'that  on 
first  reading  what  I  have  written,  men  are  not 
thoroughly  convinced.  On  the  contrary,  I  should 
very  much  wonder  if  prejudices,  which  have  been 
many  years  taking  root,  should  be  extirpated  in 
a  few  hours'  reading.  I  had  no  intention  to 
trouble  the  world  with  large  volumes.  What  I 
have  done  was  rather  with  a  view  of  giving  hints  to 
thinking  men,  who  had  leisure  and  curiosity  to  go 
to  the  bottom  of  things,  and  pursue  them  in  their 
own  minds.'  ^ 

^  Life  and  Letters  of  Berlceley,  p.  181.  See  also  Berkeley's 
correspondence  with  Sir  John  Percival,  in  Chapter  v.  of  the 
Berkeley,  in  Blackwood's  Philosophical  Classics. 


i6 


CHAPTER    II 

THE   MATERIAL  WORLD   AND   ITS   NATURAL   ORDER 

The  Material  World  is  Real  in  and  through 
Percipient    Mind.      Its   esse    is    percipi.  —  We 

put  ourselves  at  Berkeley's  point  of  view  when 
we  try  in  vain  to  conceive  the  material  uni- 
verse and  its  ambient  space  existing  in  all 
their  present  reality,  yet  unfelt,  unperceived, 
unrealised  in  any  intelligence,  finite  or  divine,  a 
dead  universe,  living  mind  in  every  form  non- 
existent. Try  to  suppose  this  wholly  abstracted 
material  world  '  as  the  sum  total  of  reality.  Is 
the  conception  possible  ?  Is  it  not  repugnant  to 
reason  ?  Must  not  a  dead  material  universe, 
abstracted  from  all  activities  of  living  spirit, 
human  or  other,  be  wholly  destitute  of  qualities  ? 
What  can  be  meant  by  an  unseen  colour,  or  an 
unheard  sound,  or  untouched,  unresisted  hard- 
ness ?  Is  not  human  perception  of  tliese  the 
deepest  and  truest  conception  we  can  form  of 
what  their  existence  or  reality  means  ?  May  we 
B  17 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

not  even  say  that  the  material  world  exists  only 
in  order  that  it  may  be  perceived,  so  that  its 
changes  may  thus  be  signs  to  each  of  lis  of  the 
reality  of  other  bodies  and  spirits,  —  a  world 
J  external  to  ourselves  ?  When  I  try  honestly  to 
make  this  experiment  of  abstracting  matter  from 
all  living  spirit,  I  find,  Berkeley  would  say, 
that  the  material  world  inevitably  loses  reality 
and  becomes  an  unthinkable  abstraction,  which 
we  may  coll  '  matter '  or  '  corporeal  substance,' 
using  words,  nevertheless,  that  have  no  meaning. 
Must  not  j)erciin,  in  short,  be  the  esse  of  the 
things  of  sense  ? 

That  Perception  is  needed  to  make  the 
Material  World  Real  is  Self-evident.  —  By 
Berkeley,  in  his  youthful  ardour,  no  proof  or 
argument  was  required  to  sustain  this  proposition ; 
to  him  the  constant  dependence  of  the  material 
world  upon  the  activities  of  living  spirit  seemed 
self-evident.  It  was  but  looking  into  one's  own 
"^  thoughts  and  trying  whether  one  could  conceive 
as  possible,  or  in  no  way  repugnant  to  reason, 
a  figure  or  a  motion,  or  a  sound,  or  a  colour, 
existing  as  an  unperceived  reality.  If  any  one 
could  do  this,  he  was  ready  to  abandon  his 
favourite  principle  of  the  absolute  dependence  of 
the  data  of  the  senses  for  their  reality  upon  living 
i8 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

Mind  or  Spirit.  It  could  not  be.  '  Some  truths  ^ 
then  are  so  near  and  obvious,'  he  exclaims, '  that  a  S^ 
man  need  only  open  his  eyes  to  see  them.  Such 
I  take  this  important  one  to  be,  that  all  the  choir 
of  heaven  and  furniture  of  earth,  in  a  word,  all 
those  bodies  which  compose  the  mighty  frame 
of  the  world,  have  not  any  substance  Avithout  a 
mind;  that  ihdr  being  is  to  be  perceived  or 
known;  and  that  so  long  as  they  are  not  per- 
ceived by  me,  or  do  not  exist  in  my  mind,  or  in 
that  of  any  other  created  spirit,  they  must  either 
have  no  existence  at  all,  or  else  subsist  in  the 
mind  of  some  Eternal  Spirit ;  it  being  perfectly 
unintelligible,  and  involving  all  the  absurdity  of 
abstraction,  to  attribute  to  any  single  part  of 
them  an  existence  independent  of  Spirit.  To 
be  convinced  of  which  one  has  only  to  try  to 
separate  the  h'ioig  of  a  sensible  thing  from  its 
being  ijerceived: '^  In  short,  if  there  was  no 
living  spirit  in  existence  to  maintain  the  reality 
of  the  things  of  sense,  the  material  world  could 
have  no  reality.  This  alleged  self-evident  truth 
is  above  all  what  the  student  of  Berkeley  has  to 
ponder  and  test,  by  prolonged  and  varied  mental 
experiments  of  his  own. 

1  Principles  of  Human  Knoivledge,  sec.  6.     Sec  also  the  first 
of  the  Three  Dialogues. 

19 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

An  Objection  answered. — It  is  not  obvious  at 
first,  or  indeed  at  last,  to  the  unreflecting.  They 
are  ready  to  say  that  nothing  is  easier  than  to 
suppose  books  existing  on  a  table,  or  trees  exist- 
ing in  a  park,  or  the  stars  existing  in  the  ambient 
space,  and  no  one  all  the  time  perceiving  or 
thinking  about  them.  Quite  true,  Berkeley 
Avould  reply;  but,  in  that  case,  the  necessary 
conditions  of  the  experiment  have  not  been  com- 
plied with.  The  living  mind  of  the  objector 
himself  has  not  been  withdrawn,  and  so  the 
abstraction  of  spirit  has  not  been  complete. 
'  What,'  he  asks, '  is  all  this,  I  beseech  you,  more 
than  framing  in  your  own  mind  ideas  of  books, 
trees,  and  stars,  and  at  the  same  time  omitting 
to  frame  the  idea  of  any  one  that  may  perceive 
them  ? '  So  that  is  nothing  to  the  purpose.  It 
only  shows  that  the  objector  is  able  to  perceive 
and  imagine;  not  that  things  can  have  intelli- 
gible reality  without  a  living  perception  of  them. 
It  shows  that  a  man  forgetting  to  take  notice  of 
himself  has  been  in  consequence  deluded  into 
supposing  that  he  has  found  bodies  existing 
wholly  divorced  from  realising  spirit;  although 
all  the  while  they  were  being  realised  in  the 
objector's  own  experience. 

The  Material  World  consists   of  Sense-pre- 

20 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

sented  Appearances.— Accordingly  the  material 
world  consists  wholly  of  what  we  may  call  sense- 
presented  phenomena  or  appearances,  sensible 
qualities,  ideas  of  sense  as  Berkeley  calls  them,  on 
account  of  their  dependence  on  being  perceived. 
Colours  are  presented  when  we  see,  motions  and 
resistances  when  we  touch  or  move,  and  sounds 
in  their  varieties  when  we  hear. 

The  Individual  '  Things '  of  Sense  are  Bundles 
of  Appearances.  —  The  appearances  presented 
to  our  senses  do  not  come  and  go  as  isolated 
units.  They  appear  blended  together  in  separate 
bundles.  Being  found  to  cohere,  the  resembling 
bundles  '  come  to  be  marked  by  one  name,  and 
to  be  reputed  one  thing.'  Thus  a  certain  colour, 
taste,  smell,  jBgure,  and  consistence,  having  been 
observed  to  go  together,  are  accounted  one  distinct 
thing,  signified  by  the  name  apple.  Other  col- 
lections constitute  a  stone,  a  tree,  a  book,  and  the 
like  sensible  things ;  which,  as  they  are  pleasing 
or  disagreeable,  excite  in  us  the  passions  of  love, 
hatred,  joy,  grief,  and  so  forth. 

What  Material  'Substances'  and  'Causes' 
mean  according  to  Spiritual  Realism. — The 
different  bundles  of  sensible  qualities,  or,  as 
Berkeley  calls  them,  '  collections  of  the  real 
ideas  that  are  presented  to  the  senses,'  are  all 

21 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

that  he  meant  by  '  material  substances.'  A  sub- 
stance is  nothing  more  than  an  isolated  aggre- 
gate of  qualities,  somehow  held  together,  and 
subject  to  continuous  orderly  changes  of  appear- 
ance. The  united  qualities  undergo  transforma- 
tions in  an  order  commonly  called  the  order 
of  nature.  The  steadiness  of  the  order  in  which 
their  transformations  proceed  enables  us,  after 
sufficient  observation  of  their  habits,  to  predict 
coming  forms  that  they  must  assume,  so  that 
present  phenomena  become  signs  of  absent 
phenomena  with  which  they  are  connected  under 
natural  law ;  thus  '  giving  us  a  sort  of  foresight, 
which  enables  us  to  regulate  our  conduct  in  the 
material  world  for  the  benefit  of  life,  and  without 
which  we  should  be  eternally  at  a  loss.'^  And 
as  'substances,'  in  the  material  world,  are  only 
bundles  of  qualities,  so  'causes,'  in  the  material 
world,  are  only  natural  signs  of  coming  changes. 
My  habitual  observation  of  apples  enables  me 
to  foresee  the  taste  of  an  apple  before  I  eat  it. 
Experience  of  the  motions  of  heavenly  bodies, 
those  huge  material  substances,  enables  science  to 
forecast  the  times  of  sunrise  and  sunset  centuries 
in  advance.  But  we  know  no  more  about  material 
substance   than   that   it   is   a  bundle   of   sense- 

^  See  Principles,  sec.  31. 
22 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

presented  qualities,  and  no  more  about  their 
material  causes  than  that  the  transformations 
in  nature  occur  in  a  constant  reliable  order. 
What  Power  keeps  the  appearances  united  in 
bundles,  or  why  the  transformations  which  the 
bundles  undergo  are  orderly  and  not  chaotic,  our 
senses  do  not  tell  us.  '  That  food  nourishes,  sleep 
refreshes,  and  fire  warms  us ;  that  to  sow  in  the 
seed-time  is  the  way  to  reap  in  the  harvest,  and 
in  general  that  to  obtain  such  and  such  ends, 
such  and  such  means  are  conducive — all  this 
we  know,  not  by  discovering  any  necessary  con- 
nection between  our  ideas  and  sense,  but  only 
by  the  observation  of  the  settled  laws  of  nature, 
without  which  we  should  be  all  in  uncertainty 
and  confusion,  and  a  grown  man  no  more  know 
how  to  manage  himself  in  the  affairs  of  life  than 
an  infant  just  born.'  ^ 

Natural  Co-existences  and  Natural  Sequences. 
— In  short,  we  find  that  the  phenomena  of  which 
the  material  world  consists  coexist  in  separate 
so-called  'substances,'  and  that  they  follow  one 
another  in  a  steady  and  therefore  calculable 
succession,  called  '  causal '  order.  But  all  we  are 
entitled  to  mean  by  material  substance  is  this 
coexistence  of  qualities;  and  all  we  are  entitled 

^  Principles,  sec.  31. 
23 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM  • 

to  mean  by  material  causation  is  this  orderlj'', 
calculable  succession  of  facts,  which  all  depend 
for  their  realit}^  on  being  perceived. 

Percipient  Spirits  and  Self-consciousness.— 

But  this  is  not  the  whole  or  the  chief  part. 
Objects  in  the  material  world  depend  for  their  real 
existence  on  being  perceived.  Is  there  nothing 
to  tell  about  the  percipients  as  well  as  the  per- 
ceived ?  The  inconsiderate  are  apt  to  forget  this 
question,  because  percipient  spirits  are  not  visible 
objects  of  sense,  with  which  all  are  familiar;  and 
yet  percipient  spirits  are  at  the  root  of  all  things. 
So  besides  all  that  endless  variety  of  ideas  or 
objects  of  knowledge,  aggregated  in  their  (so- 
called)  substances,  and  naturally  ordered  accord- 
ing to  their  (so-called)  natural  causes — besides 
these,  Berkeley  finds  a  '  something '  which  knows 
or  perceives  them,  and  exercises  divers  operations, 
as  willing,  imagining,  remembering,  about  them. 
'  This  perceiving  active  being  is  what  I  call  Mind, 
Spirit,  Soul,  or  Myself.  By  which  words  I  do  not 
denote  any  one  of  my  ideas,  but  a  thing  entirely 
distinct  from  them,  wherein  they  exist ;  or,  which 
is  the  same  thing,  whereby  they  are  perceived.'  ^ 
Thus  the  universe   in  which   I   am   living  con- 

^  Principles,  sec.  2. 
24 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

sists  of  bundles  of  sensible  appearances,  con- 
stantly undergoing  transformations,  in  an  orderly 
calculable  manner,  all  dependent  on  Spirit  or 
Mind. 

Signified  by  the  Personal  Pronouns.  —  But 
what  of  this  '  something,'  signified  by  the  personal 
pronoun  '  I,' — not  to  speak  of  '  you '  or '  he  "?  '  I'  is 
neither  a  quality  nor  a  bundle  of  qualities,  like  the 
things  of  sense ;  nor  can  it  be  an  empty  abstrac- 
tion, like  the  abstract  material  substance  of  some 
philosophers  1  For  '  I '  continues  the  same  person ; 
but  the  world  of  the  senses,  including  my  own 
body,  is  continually  changing.  In  the  whole 
world  of  sense-presented  appearances,  I  find  no- 
thing corresponding  to  the  '  self '  that  I  am  obliged 
to  presuppose  in  all  perceptions ;  and  that  is  in  a 
manner  revealed  when  in  memory  I  recall  the 
past,  and  recognise  that  '  I '  am  a  person  who 
is  still  the  same  ijerson  as  I  was  years  before. 

My  personal  Identity. —  I  find  nothing  in 
the  world  of  the  senses  corresponding  to  this 
cord,  as  it  were,  of  personal  identity.  I  cannot 
remember  the  past  without  being  sure  that  '  I ' 
existed  in  that  past.  To  suppose  that  my  memory 
can  go  back  to  what  happened  before  I  existed 
would  subvert  the  basis  of  knowledge.  And  my 
present    feelings    and    thoughts    are    not    thus 

25 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

identical  with  past  ones.  The  pain  or  pleasure 
of  to-day  is  not  identical  with  the  pain  or  pleasure 
I  felt  this  day  last  year,  however  much  it  may 
resemble  it.  Without  this  personal  identity  '  I ' 
could  not  be  responsible  for  actions.  Not  so  with 
the  things  of  sense.  When  I  call  my  body,  or 
any  other  of  the  things  of  sense,  '  the  same '  to- 
day as  it  was  last  year,  this  is  only  in  a  con- 
ventional meaning  of  the  term  '  same,'  for  they 
have  undergone  much  change  of  their  constituent 
phenomena  in  the  interval ;  and  the  phenomena 
are  the  whole  of  them,  nothing  permanent 
underlying,  as  in  the  unique  case  of  the  identity 
of  the  *  I.'  Moreover,  things  of  sense  are  only 
sigfns  of  other  thino^s  of  sense,  under  laws  over 
which  the  things  themselves  have  no  control. 
Intending  personal  volitions  are  absolutely  self- 
caused  ;  so  that  the  self  as  their  originating 
cause  is  alone  responsible  for  them.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  so-called  natural  'causes'  within 
the  material  world  are  only  signs,  connected 
with  preceding  signs,  in  Avhat  may  be  an  un- 
beginning  and  endless  procession.  Morally 
responsible  acts  of  will  must  originate  in  the 
persons  who  are  responsible  for  them,  if  moral 
responsibility  is  real.  It  cannot  be  transferred 
to  preceding  (so-called)  causes  in  an  endless 
26 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

regress,  as  in  the  sense-symbolism  of  the  natural 
world. 
The  only  Real  Agent  in  Existence  is  Spirit. 

— Spirit  in  fact  is  the  one  finally  sustaining  and 
finally  active  Reality  in  the  universe,  so  far,  at  any 
rate,  as  the  universe  has  any  practical  relation  to 
me.  The  'substances'  and  'causes'  in  the  material 
world  are  all  subordinate  to  spirit.  Matter  con- 
sists of  aggregates  of  appearances  presented  in 
the  senses.  The  things  of  sense  per  se  are  wholly 
passive  and  impotent ;  persons  are  the  only  active 
originative  powers.^ 

Is  an  Impotent  Material  World  therefore  use- 
less ?— Does  all  this  imply  that  the  material 
world  is  a  powerless  illusion,  and  that  only 
spiritual  beings  are  real  ?  Have  the  appearances 
of  sense  no  office  to  discharge  in  the  economy 
of  human  life  and  the  universe?  Far  from  it. 
According  to  Berkeley,  they  play  indispensable 
parts  in  the  world-drama.   Look  at  some  of  these. 

The  Material  World  reveals  to  each  Person 
that  he  is  not  the  only  Person  in  Existence.— 
1.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  through  the  sense-pre- 
sented signs  commonly  called  '  matter,'  that  I  find 

I  Principles,  sec.  25,  where  the  total  impotence  of  matter  is 
deduced  from  its  dependence  on  being  perceived  ;  also  Siris; 
sees.  154,  155,  252-258,  etc. 

27 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

that  I  am  not  alone  in  the  universe,  a  solitary 
percipient  and  voluntary  agent.  I  find  some 
presented  appearances  dependent  on  my  percep- 
tions and  obedient  to  my  will ;  but  over  the  great 
majority  I  find  that  I  have  no  control.  Most 
of  them  come  and  go  whether  I  will  or  not.  In 
particular  I  perceive  motions  and  other  sensible 
changes  which  signify  to  me  that  spiritual  agents, 
not  myself,  co-operate  in  their  production.  I 
recognise  these  appearances  as  the  actions  of 
embodied  human  spirits,  in  whose  company  I  thus 
find  myself,  by  means  of  this  natural  language  of 
the  senses,  supplemented  as  it  is  by  the  various 
artificial  languages  of  mankind,  spoken  and 
written,  all  due  to  our  senses. 

'My  body'  and  its  Office  as  a  Medium.— In 
particular  I  find  that  my  power  over  the  different 
bundles  of  passive  phenomena  which  form  the 
things  of  sense  is  immediately  confined  to  the 
small  mass  of  matter  in  which  I  find  myself 
embodied,  and  which  I  call  my  body,  it  being  my 
special  portion  of  the  material  world.  It  is  by 
movements  of  my  body  or  some  of  its  organs 
that  I  signify  my  spiritual  existence  to  other 
persons,  and  it  is  through  like  means  that  they 
signify  their  existence  to  me.  None  of  my  senses 
gives  me  an  immediate  perception  of  things  that 
28 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

are  not  in  actual  contact  with  my  body.  We  are 
apt  to  suppose  that  we  see  and  hear  things  and 
persons  that  are  at  a  distance  from  our  bodies. 
It  was  by  disproof  of  this,  in  his  New  Theory  of 
Vision,  that  Berkeley,  in  1709,  opened  the  way 
to  a  full  disclosure  of  his  spiritual  reahsm  in  the 
years  following.  Instead  of  seeing  distant  things 
or  distant  persons,  we  can  see  only  visual  signs 
of  their  presence,  and  of  their  distance  from  our 
bodies,  the  distance  being  signified  by  the  amount 
of  locomotive  experience  we  should  have  to  pass 
through  to  be  in  contact  with  their  bodies. 
For  the  appearances  we  see  vary  in  distinct- 
ness and  otherwise,  in  proportion  as  the  distant 
objects  are  near  or  far  off.  Visual  and  aud- 
ible signs,  especially  their  own  bodily  motions,  in 
like  manner  introduce  me  to  other  spirits— other 
human  beings — embodied  like  myself,  and  also 
to  the  Avhole  Avorld  outside  my  own  body.  Our 
opportunities  are  multiplied  indefinitely  by  the 
mechanical  devices  which  things  of  sense  supply 
for  increasing  this  knowledge.  Telescopes  and 
microscopes  are  familiar  examples. 

The  World  of  Sensible  Signs  shows  above  all 

the  Constant  Activity  of  pervading  Omnipotent 

Spirit. — But  the  sensible  signs  which  show  the 

existence  and   activity   of  other  human   spirits 

29 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

like  myself  are  few  and  far  between,  among  the 
innumerable  changes  in  the  world  opened  to  us 
through  our  senses.  Though  there  are  some 
changes  in  the  things  of  sense,  '  which  convince 
us  that  human  agents  are  concerned  in  producing 
them,  it  is  nevertheless  evident  to  every  one  that 
those  things  which  are  called  the  works  of  Nature, 
that  is  by  far  the  greater  part  of  the  changes 
presented  to  our  senses,  are  not  produced  by,  or 
dependent  on,  the  wills  of  men.'  '  There  is,  there- 
fore, some  other  Spirit  that  causes  them ;  since  it 
is  repugnant  to  reason  that  they  should  subsist 
by  themselves  or  uncaused.  But  if  we  attentively 
consider  the  constant  regularity,  order,  and  con- 
catenation of  all  sensible  things,  we  shall  clearly 
perceive  that  they  belong  to  the  aforesaid  Spirit 
Who  works  all  in  all,  and  by  Whom  all  things  con- 
sist.' ^  Thus  the  universe  of  sense-signs  constantly 
signifies  Omniscient  and  Omnipotent  Spirit,  even 
as  their  bodily  signs  reveal  to  me  the  thoughts 
and  feelings  and  intending  vohtions  of  my  fellow- 
men. 

God  speaks  to  all  Men  through  the  Data  of 
their  Senses  as  one  Man  to  another  through 
Spoken  Words. — That  all  sensible  signs  signify  the 
presence  and  agency  of  Omnipotent  Spirit,  in  like 

^  Principles,  sec,  14S. 
30 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

manner  as  some  sense-signs  signify  the  presence 
and  agency  of  a  fellow  human  spirit,  does  not  satisfy 
the  sceptic.  Alciphron,  in  the  Fourth  Dialogue, 
asks:  'Do  you  pretend  that  you  can  have  the 
same  assurance  of  the  being  of  God  that  you  can 
have  of  mine,  whom  you  actually  see  stand  before 
you  and  talk  to  you  ? '  '  The  very  same,  if  not 
greater,'  Euphranor  replies.  'For  by  the  person 
Alciphron  is  meant  an  individual  thinking  thing 
or  spirit,  and  not  the  hair,  skin,  and  visible  surface, 
or  any  part  of  the  outward  shape,  form,  and  colour 
of  Alciphron.  And  in  granting  this  (as  you  have 
done),  you  grant  that,  in  strict  sense,  I  do  not  see 
Alciphron,  that  is,  that  individual  thing  or  Spirit, 
but  only  such  visible  signs  as  infer  the  being  of 
that  invisible  thinking  Soul.  Even  so  it  seems  to 
me  that  though  I  cannot  with  eyes  of  flesh  behold 
the  invisible  God,  yet  I  do  in  the  strictest  sense 
perceive,  by  all  my  senses,  such  signs,  such  effects, 
as  demonstrate  the  invisible  God,  with  the  same 
evidence  at  least  as  other  signs  perceived  by 
sense  suggest  the  existence  of  your  Soul  or  Spirit, 
of  which  I  am  convinced  by  only  a  few  sensible 
signs ;  whereas  I  do  at  all  times  and  in  all  places 
perceive  sensible  signs  of  the  being  of  God,'  '  But 
it  is  my  hearing  you  talk,'  Alciphron  rejoins, 
'that  is  in  strict   philosophical  truth   the   best 

31 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

argument  for  your  being.  And  this  is  inappli- 
cable to  your  purpose ;  for  you  will  not,  I  suppose, 
pretend  that  God  speaks  to  men  through  their 
senses  as  one  man  doth  to  another  ? '  '  But  what 
if  it  shall  appear,'  replies  Euphranor,  '  that  God 
speaks  to  men  by  the  intervention  of  arbitrary, 
outward,  sensible  signs,  having  no  resemblance  or 
necessary  connection  with  the  things  they  stand 
for ;  if  it  shall  appear  that  by  innumerable  com- 
binations of  these  signs  in  nature  an  endless 
variety  of  things  is  discovered  to  us,  and  that  we 
are  thereby  taught  and  admonished  what  to  shun 
and  what  to  pursue,  and  are  directed  how  to 
regulate  our  motions,  and  how  to  act  with  regard 
to  things  distant  from  us,  will  this  content  you  ? ' 
Being  assured  that  it  would,  Euphranor  proceeds 
to  fortify  his  position  by  illustrations  of  the  sense- 
symbolism  which  makes  the  material  world  to  us 
as  really  a  language  of  God  as  spoken  or  written 
words  constitute  the  language  of  men. 

The  Material  World  is  charged  with  Pleasures 
and  Pains,  which  by  Interpretation  of  its  Pheno- 
mena we  can  secure  or  avoid. — 2.  Through  my 
senses  I  not  only  find  that  1  am  not  solitary  in 
the  universe,  but  through  my  embodiments  parti- 
cipate in  innumerable  pains  and  pleasures.    The 

32 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

world  of  the  senses  is  charged  with  signs  of  possible 
bodily  pains  and  bodily  pleasures;  and  it  is  by  in- 
terpreting the  phenomena  presented  to  our  senses 
that  we  distinguish  health-giving  signs  from  those 
which  forecast  bodily  injury,  so  that  we  are  able  to 
avail  ourselves  of  the  one  sort  and  to  avoid  the 
other.  We  find  that  bread  will  nourish  our  bodies, 
and  that  arsenic  will  destroy  them.  My  body  is  a 
part  of  the  universal  system  of  sensible  signs,  and 
it  is  also,  in  this  life,  virtually  a  part  of  myself. 
But  neither  my  body  nor  any  other  portion  of 
the  material  world  is  supposed  by  the  spiritual 
realist  to  be  so  dependent  on  human  spirits  as  to 
go  in  and  out  of  existence  as  it  is  perceived  or  not 
perceived  by  them,  having  thus  only  an  inter- 
rupted reality,  perceived  now  by  one  person  and 
again  by  another.  The  things  of  sense  are,  on  the 
contrary,  always  kept  in  existence  in  and  by  the 
Universal  World-Mind  that  sustains  and  gives 
reality  to  the  whole  material  world.  Thus  there 
is  an  established  harmony,  which  enables  the 
embodied  spirit  to  regulate  his  actions  for  the 
benefit  of  his  life. 

Beattie's  Travesty  of  Spiritual  Realism. — 
Yet  it  has  been  strangely  supposed  that  this 
spiritual  realism  requires  us  to  alter  our  conduct 
in  the  atfairs  of  life,  and  to  act  as  if  we  were  in 

c  33 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

an  iminterpretable  chaos.  Read,  for  example, 
what  the  poet  Beattie  says  about  Berkeley  in 
his  Essay  on  Truth: — 'If  a  man  believe  this 
strange  doctrine  of  Berkeley  as  steadily  and  with 
as  little  distrust  as  I  believe  the  contrary,  he  will, 
I  am  afraid,  have  but  little  reason  to  applaud 
himself  on  this  new  acquisition  in  science ;  he  will 
soon  find  that  it  had  been  better  for  him  to  have 
reasoned  and  believed  and  acted  like  the  rest  of 
the  world.  If  he  fall  down  a  precipice,  or  be 
trampled  under  foot  by  horses,  it  will  avail  him 
little  that  he  once  had  the  honour  to  be  a  dis- 
ciple of  Berkeley,  and  that  those  dangerous 
objects  are  nothing  but  ideas  in  the  mind.  And 
yet  if  such  a  man  be  seen  to  avoid  a  precipice,  or 
to  get  out  of  the  way  of  a  coach  and  six  horses  at 
full  speed,  he  acts  as  inconsistently  with  his  belief 
as  if  he  ran  away  from  a  picture  of  an  angry  man, 
even  while  he  believed  it  to  be  only  a  picture  .  ,  , 
I  will  not  say  that  this  man  runs  a  greater  risk  of 
universal  scepticism  than  of  universal  credulity. 
Either  the  one,  or  the  other,  or  both,  must  be  his 
portion ;  and  either  the  one  or  the  other  would 
be  sufficient  to  embitter  my  whole  life,  and  to 
disqualify  me  for  every  duty  of  a  rational  creature, 
.  .  .  But  that  I  may  no  longer  suppose  what  I 
maintain  to  be  impossible,  i.e.  that  mankind  in 
34 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

general,  or  even  one  rational  being,  could,  by  force 
of  argument,  be  convinced  that  this  absurd  doctrine 
is  true  —  what  if  all  men  were  in  one  instant 
(miraculously)  deprived  of  their  understanding  by 
almighty  power,  and  made  to  believe  that  matter 
has  no  existence  but  as  an  idea  in  the  mind,  all 
other  things  remaining  as  they  are.  Doubtless 
this  catastrophe  would,  according  to  our  meta- 
physicians, throw  a  wonderful  light  upon  all  parts 
of  knowledge.  But  of  this  I  am  certain,  that  in 
less  than  a  month  after,  there  could  not,  without 
another  miracle,  be  one  human  creature  alive  on 
the  face  of  the  earth.' 

Berkeley's  use  of  the  term  'Idea'  apt  to 
mislead.— For  Beattie's  travesty  of  Berkeley's 
conception  of  the  material  world  Berkeley  is  him- 
self responsible  so  far  as,  by  his  application  of 
the  term  'idea'  to  what  is  actually  presented 
to  our  senses,  he  seems  to  say  that  the  objects 
present  in  the  senses  are  only  unmeaning  fancies, 
that  actual  sense  is  identical  with  imagined 
sense.  Berkeley  himself  thus  anticipates  Beattie's 
intended  reductio  ad  ahsurdum : — '  It  will  be 
objected  that  by  the  foregoing  principles,  all  that 
is  real  and  substantial  in  nature  is  banished 
out  of  the  world,  and  instead  thereof  a  chimerical 
scheme   of    ideas    takes    its   place.      All   things 

35 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

that  exist,  exist  only  in  the  mind.  What  there- 
fore becomes  of  the  sun,  moon  and  stars  ?  What  - 
must  we  think  of  houses,  mountains,  rivers, 
trees,  stones,  nay  even  of  our  own  bodies  ? 
Are  all  these  but  so  many  chimeras  and  illu- 
sions of  the  fancy  ?  To  all  which  I  answer, 
that  by  my  principles  we  are  not  deprived  of  any 
one  thing  in  nature.  Whatever  we  see,  feel,  hear, 
or  in  any  wise  understand  remains  as  secure  as 
ever,  and  is  as  real  as  ever.  There  is  still  a 
rerum  natura,  and  the  distinction  between 
realities  and  chimeras  remains  in  full  force.  This 
is  evident  from  what  I  have  shown  is  meant  by 
real  things,  in  opposition  to  chimeras,  or  ideas  of 
our  own  framing.'^  Yet  experience  has  shown 
that  this  application  of  the  word  '  idea,'  alike  to 
realities  and  to  chimeras,  is  apt  to  suggest  that 
the  so-called  '  real '  is  only  chimerical.  A  bundle 
of  signs  that  is  seen  or  touched  ought  not  to  be 
even  verbally  identified  with  an  imagined  bundle. 
The  Material  Universe  exercises  the  Scien- 
tific Understanding. — 3.  Another  function  which 
Berkeley's  material  world  discharges  is  that  it 
exercises  the  understanding  in  interpreting 
scientifically  the  phenomena  of  which  it  is  com- 
posed.    These  phenomena  are  interpretable  and 

1  Principles,  sec.  34  ;  also  29,  .30,  33. 
36 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

calculable,  because  they  are  evolved  in  constant 
order;  as  we  commonly  say,  they  are  under 
natural  laws.  Their  interpretability  is  founded 
on  the  constancy  of  the  order  in  which  their 
changes  proceed. 

Why  do  we  believe  that  the  Universe  is  a 
Cosmos  ? — How  do  we  know  that  there  must  be 
steady  order  pervading  what  on  the  surface 
often  appears  chaotic  ?  Berkeley  refers  the  uni- 
versal belief  in  the  uniformity  of  nature  to 
observation,  '  Having  always  observed  that  our 
perception  of  a  certain  round,  luminous  figure 
which  we  call  the  sun  is  accompanied  by  a  sensa- 
tion called  heat,  we  conclude  that  the  sun  and 
heat  are  constantly  connected ;  so  that  the  appear- 
ance of  the  one  is  a  sign  of  the  appearance  of  the 
other,  and  so  the  one  is  called  the  cause  of  the 
other.'  But  oar  narrow  observation  is  not  enough 
to  explain  faith  in  constant  order  underlying  all 
natural  changes.  For  '  observation '  is  necessarily 
confined  to  the  present  and  the  past;  I  cannot 
observe  the  future :  indeed  I  can  only  observe  a 
small  portion  of  the  present  and  the  past.  Even 
if  I  had  reasonable  assurance  that  natural  order 
had  been  universally  maintained  hitherto,  what 
guarantee  have  I  for  its  continuance?  Do  I 
know  a  priori  enough  of  the  universe  in  which  I 
37 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

find  myself,  to  be  assured  that  it  is  a  universe  in 
which  the  cosmos  of  the  past  may  not  become 
chaos  in  the  future  ?  It  is  not  enough  to  say  that 
uniform  order  in  the  past  has  accustomed  us  to 
expect  a  like  uniformity  in  future;  that  an  irresist- 
ible habit  of  expectation  is  thus  formed,  and  that 
we  could  not  live  if  we  were  to  resist  this  habit. 
That  is  true ;  but  to  convert  the  habit  into  reaso7i- 
ahle  faith  we  must  presuppose  that  we  are  living 
in  a  reasonably  conducted  or  trustworthy  uni- 
verse. We  must  receive  the  data  of  the  senses 
in  reasonable  confidence,  that  the  habits  which 
they  form  are  in  harmony  with  actual  Reason 
immanent  in  things, — that  we  are  living  in  a 
natural  cosmos,  not  in  what  may  turn  out  in 
the  end  to  be  chaos.  But  more  of  this  in  the 
sequel. 

The  Material  World  is  fitted  to  evoke  Philo- 
sophic Thought. — 4.  The  material  world,  under 
Berkeley's  conception  of  it,  is  not  only  fit  to 
exercise  the  scientific  understanding,  but  the  con- 
ception itself  signally  exercises  philosophic  reason 
and  imagination,  and  sustains  faith  in  the  re- 
ligious conception  of  the  universe.  Berkeley's 
immaterialism,  as  Sir  James  Mackintosh  remarks, 
'is  chiefly  valuable  as  a  touchstone  of  meta- 
physical sagacity,  showing  those  to  be  altogether 
38 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

I  without  it,  who,  like  Johnson  and  Beattie,  believed 
I  that   his   speculations  were   sceptical,  that   they  { 
j  implied  any  distrust  of  the  senses,  or  that  they  \ 
!  had  the  smallest  tendency  to  disturb  reason  or  to 
alter   conduct.'     And   to    think   of  the   material 
world  as  itself  impotent,  and  necessarily  depen- 
dent   for    its    real    existence    and    its     natural  , 
order  upon  omniscient  and   omnipotent  World-  \ 
Mind,    is    at   least   a    step    to    a    more   definite   1 
religious  conception  of  the  spirituality,  intelligi- 
bility, and  morality  that  underlies  the  universe. 
Virgil  and  Wordsworth  are  among  many  examples 
of  how  visible  nature  touches  the  imagination  of 
the  poet. 

Does  Berkeley's  Conception  of  the  Material 
World  satisfy  the  Human  Mind?— But  after 
all  one  may  ask  whether  this  way  of  thinking 
about  the  ordered  world  presented  to  our  senses 
fully  satisfies  the  human  mind,  as  a  sufficient 
expression  of  our  relations  to  matter  and  its 
changes. 

'Sameness'  versus  'Similarity'  in  things. — 
Does  the  continued  existence  of  things  visible 
and  tangible,  and  their  orderly  changes,  through 
their  dependence  on  the  omnipotence  of  the 
Universal  World-Mind,   adequately   express    the 

39 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

sameness,  for  example,  of  this  book  on  my  table,  as 
seen  and  bandied  by  two  different  persons ;  or  of 
the  table  itself  on  which  the  book  was  resting  ? 
When  a  hundred  persons  are  perceiving  a  tree 
simultaneously,  are  there  really  a  hundred  trees, 
all  similar  but  not  the  same  ?  Can  two  persons 
ever  be  properly  said  to  perceive  the  same  thing, 
if  the  appearances  presented  to  each  of  them  are 
not  numerically  the  same,  but  only  similar  ?  Can 
what  is  within  my  mind  be  identically,  at  the 
same  time,  within  the  mind  of  another  ?  Is 
the  material '  substance,'  against  which  Philonous 
argues  so  strenuously  in  the  Dialogues,  only 
an  empty  abstraction  ?  Does  the  bundle  of 
impotent  sense-appearances  which,  according  to 
Berkeley,  alone  makes  individual  material  sub- 
stances,— does  this  exist,  when  they  are  unper- 
ceived,  thus  preserving  its  objective  identity 
when  presented  to  innumerable  percipients  ? 

Berkeley's  Answer. — Philonous,  who  personates 
Berkeley  in  the  Dialogues,  seems  more  embarrassed 
by  this  difficulty  than  by  any  other,  when  he  tries 
to  vindicate  'perceived  similarity,  as  practically 
objective  sameness,  in  the  case  of  a  thing  present 
to  the  senses  of  different  percipients.  Hylas 
objects  that  the  same  idea  which  one  man  has 
'  in  his  mind '  cannot  be  in  the  mind  of  another 
40 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

man,  any  more  than  his  consciousness  can  be  the 
consciousness  of  another.     '  Doth  it  not  therefore 
follow,'  he  asks,  '  that  no  two  persons  can  perceive 
the  same  thing  ?  and  is  not  this  highly  absurd  ? ' 
'  If  the  term  same  be  taken  in  the  vulgar  accepta- 
tion,' Philonous  replies,  '  it  is  certain  (and  not  at 
all  repugnant  to  the  principles  I  maintain)  that 
different  persons  may  perceive  the  same  thing,  or 
the  same  thing  exist  in  different  minds.     Words 
are  of  arbitrary  imposition,  and  since  we  are  used 
to  apply  the  word  same  when  no  distinction  or 
variety  is  perceived,  and  I  do  not  pretend  to  alter 
their  perceptions,  it  follows  that  as  men  have  said 
before,  '  several  saw  the  same  thing,'  so  they  may 
upon  the  like  occasion  still  continue  to  use  the 
same  phrase,  without  any  deviation  either  from 
propriety  of  language  or  from  the  truth  of  things. 
But  if  the  term  same  be  used  in  the  acceptation 
of  philosophers,  who  pretend   to   an   abstracted 
notion  of  identity,  then,  according  to  their  sundry 
definitions  of  this  notion,  it  may  or  may  not  be 
possible  for  divers  persons  to  perceive  the  same 
thing.     But  whether  philosophers  shall  think  fit 
to  call  a  sensible  thing  the  same  or  no  is,  I  conceive, 
of  small  importance.     Let  us  suppose  several  men 
together,  all  affected  in  liUe  sort  by  their  senses, 
and  who  had  yet  never  known  the  use  of  language, 
41 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

they  "would  without  question  agree  in  their  per- 
ceptions. Though  perhaps,  when  they  came  to 
the  use  of  speech,  some,  regarding  the  uniformness 
of  what  was  perceived,  might  call  it  the  same 
thing;  others,  especially  regarding  the  diversity 
of  persons  who  perceived,  might  choose  the  de- 
nomination of  different  things.  But  who  sees 
not  that  all  the  dispute  is  about  a  word,  i.e. 
whether  what  is  perceived  by  different  persons 
may  yet  have  the  denomination  '  same '  applied  to 
it  ?  Or  suppose  a  house,  whose  walls  remaining 
unaltered,  the  chambers  are  all  pulled  down,  and 
new  ones  built  in  their  place,  and  that  you 
should  call  this  the  same,  and  I  should  say  it  was 
not  the  same  house,  would  we  not  for  all  this 
perfectly  agree  in  our  thought  of  the  house, 
considered  in  itself  ?  and  would  not  all  the  differ- 
ence consist  in  a  sound  ?  If  you  should  still  say, 
we  differed  in  our  notions,  for  that  you  superadded 
to  your  idea  of  the  house  the  abstracted  idea  of 
identity,  whereas  I  did  not ;  I  would  tell  you,  I 
know  not  what  you  mean  by  the  abstracted  idea 
of  identity,  and  should  desire  you  to  look  into 
your  own  thoughts  and  be  sure  you  understood  it 
yourself.'  ^ 
Inadequacy  of  a  Conception  of  the  Things  of 

^  See  Third  Dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Philonous. 
42 


THE  MATERIAL  WORLD 

Sense  which  excludes  '  Sameness.'— Notwith- 
standing all  that  Philonous  says,  this  transla- 
tion of  sameness  into  similarity,  in  what  are 
commonly  called  'the  same  things'  seems  to 
leave  us  still  dissatisfied.  For  it  offers  us  as 
many  material  worlds  as  there  are  percipient 
spirits  in  existence;  multiplied  too  by  the 
perceptions  of  'the  same  thing'  by  the  same 
person  at  different  times.  One  might  say  that  it 
also  implies  as  many  percipients  as  there  are 
perceptions,  were  it  not  for  our  consciousness  of 
personal  sameness,  which  makes  the  difference 
between  individual  spirits  and  the  collections 
of  impotent  j)henomcna  conventionally  called 
'  material  substances.' 

Sameness  not  mere  Similarity.— But  although 
nothing  corresponding  to  personal  identity  in  the 
spiritual  world  is  presupposed  in  the  presented 
appearances  that  compose  the  things  of  sense, 
may  not  the  ajjpearances  that  are  perceived  by 
me  to-day  be  objectively  identical  Avith  those  per- 
ceived by  me  to-morrow;  and  may  not  the  appear- 
ances perceived  by  a  hundred  persons  at  once 
be  not  merely  similar  but  objectively  identical  ? 
'  Similarity '  is  as  much  an  empty  abstraction 
as  '  identity,'  if  either  is  so.  The  mere  fancies 
that  arise  in  my  mind  to-day,  however  similar, 
43 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

are  not  identical  with  those  that  arose  yesterday ; 
and  those  that  arise  in  one  imagination  are  not 
identical  with  those  that  arise  in  the  imagination 
of  other  persons,  however  much  they  may  re- 
semble them.  Does  not  the  difference  between 
what  is  presented  to  us  in  sense  and  what  rises 
in  imagination  appear  in  this  ? 

A  Question  proposed. — The  question  comes  to 
be  whether  the  permanent  dependence  of  the 
material  world  on  the  Omnipotent  Spirit  is  an 
adequate  account  of  the  continued  objective  exist- 
ence of  sense-presented  phenomena.  Are  human 
spirits  so  related,  sub-consciously  it  may  be,  to  the 
Universal  Spirit,  as  well  as  to  one  another,  in  and 
through  the  Universal  Spirit,  that  objects  pre- 
sented to  the  senses  of  one  man  can  in  this  way 
be  numerically  the  same  as  those  presented  to 
different  men,  or  to  the  same  man  at  different 
times  ?  This  question  may  be  left  for  the  con- 
sideration of  the  reader. 


44 


CHAPTER    III 

EMBODIED   SPIRITS   AND   MORAL   ORDER — BIRTH 
AND   DEATH 

The   Material   World  becomes   real  in   in- 
numerable  Spirits. — In   interpreting    the   sense 
signs   that   compose  the   material  world,  I  find 
that  /  am  not  the  only  human  percipient  and 
asrent  in    existence.      I    find   millions    of   com- 
^  panions,    embodied  like   myself,   revealing   their 
spiritual    reality    and    activity    to   one  another, 
through    their   bodies   and    their   bodily  move- 
ments.     The   material  world  is   realised  at  this 
moment   in    the    perceptions    of   more    than    a 
thousand   millions   of  individual   human  spirits 
embodied    on    our    planet.      To    this    multipli- 
cation of  sense-perceptions  in  the  minds  of  the 
millions  of  mankind  now  living  must  be  added 
tall  like  experiences  in  departed  generations,  as 
'  well  as  in  generations  yet  unborn.    Whether  the 
sense-presented  appearances  of  which  each  person 
45 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

is  aware  are  objectively  the  same,  or  whether 
they  must  in  all  cases  be  separate  spiritual  edi- 
tions of  similar  sense-appearances,  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  an  alternative  ambiguously  determined  by 
Berkeley.  At  any  rate  the  world  of  sensible 
signs  is  somehow  real  in  millions  of  embodied 
human  spirits. 

Does  the  Human  Spirit  die  with  the  Human 
Body  ?— But  what  of  the  individual  human  beings 
who  thus  contribute  to  reality,  and  help  to  pro- 
duce changes,  in  the  evolving  world  present  to 
their  senses  ?     Generations  of  persons  come  and 
depart,  ceasing  to  present  visible  or  other  sensible 
signs  of  their  continued  existence.     Their  bodies 
are  born  and  die.     Is  the  life  of  the  human  spirit 
contemporaneous  with  the  birth  and  dissolution 
of  the  bodily  organism  which  signifies  its  exist- 
ence ?     Memory,  which  bears  witness  to  the  exist- 
ence of  the  identical  reminiscent  spirit  for  a  few 
past  years,  cannot  recall  an  experience  preceding 
the  birth  of  its  body ;  and  the  now  living  spirit 
can  of  course  have  had  no  experience  of  the  con- 
sequence of  the  death  of  the  body.     His  embodied 
life   lasts,   as  it  were   for   a  moment,  between  a 
mysterious   unbeginning  Past  and  a   mysterious 
unending  Future.   Does  the  spirit  live  only  as  long 
as  the  organised  body  lasts  ? 
46 


EMBODIED  SPIRITS 

Is  there  a  Plurality  of  Spiritual  Worlds? 
— Human  spirits  are  the  only  ones  that  come 
within  the  range  of  human  experience.  Whether 
others,  more  or  less  like  them,  in  other  worlds, 
present  there  sensible  signs  of  their  existence,  is  an 
interesting  question.  The  advance  of  astronomy 
has  vastly  enlarged  the  modern  conception  of 
the  material  world,  and  made  it  difficult  to 
suppose  that  this  small  and  remote  planet  is 
the  only  one,  among  innumerable  stars  and 
planets,  that  is  the  abode  of  embodied  spirits. 
What  of  the  other  planets  in  our  own  solar 
system,  and  what  of  their  central  sun  ?  What  of 
the  millions  of  other  suns  with  their  attendant 
planets,  still  inadequately  explored  by  telescopes, 
or  interpreted  in  the  inferences  of  science  ?  Is 
there  a  plurality  of  worlds  occupied  by  embodied 
spirits  ? 

Micromegas  the  Celestial  Traveller.  —  At 
any  rate  we  have  no  sensible  signs  of  their 
existence,  such  as  we  have  of  our  human 
companions.  We  cannot,  like  Micromegas,  the 
supposed  inhabitant  of  one  of  the  planets  of  the 
Dog  Star,  in  Voltaire's  romance,  ask  a  native  of 
the  planet  Saturn,  how  many  senses  the  persons 
on  his  globe  have.  '  We  have  seventy-two  senses,' 
the  Saturnian  is  made  to  say, '  and  we  are  every 
47 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

day  complaining  of  the  smallness  of  the  number. 
Our  imagination  goes  far  beyond  our  wants.'  '  I 
can  very  well  believe  it,'  Micromegas  replies,  '  for 
on  our  globe  we  have  very  near  one  thousand 
senses,  and  yet  with  all  these  we  feel  a  constant 
inquietude,  telling  us  that  there  are  beings  in- 
finitely nearer  perfection  than  ourselves.' 

The  Qualities  of  Matter  must  differ  accord- 
ing to  the  Senses  of  the  Percipients.— But  if  we 
cannot  directly  perceive  signs  of  embodied  spirits 
on  neighbouring  planets,  even  such  signs  as  the 
supposed  canals  on  Mars,  there  may  be  more  or 
less  probable  inferences.     Our   own   planet  was 
long  desolate,  and  may  be  desolate  again.     The 
history  of  the   other   heavenly  bodies   may  be 
similar.     And,  as  the  planetary  tour  of  Microme- 
gas suggests,  the  sense  organs  of  embodied  spirits 
in  different   regions   may   vary  in    innumerable 
ways,  and  so  the  perceived  appearances  of  mat- 
ter may  be  different  in  each  from  the  qualities 
matter  presents   to   us.      Our   five    senses   may 
all  be  wanting  in  other  stellar  races  ;  their  offices 
being  discharged  by  the  seventy-two  senses  of  the 
Saturnian,  or  the  thousand  senses  of  Micromegas ; 
their  respective  material  worlds  consisting  in  corb- 
sequence  of    qualities  wholly  unimaginable   by 
man.     What  we  call  '  matter '  would  thus  present 
48 


EMBODIED  SPIRITS 

qualities  on  each  planet  corresponding  to  the 
senses  and  sense  experiences  of  its  inhabitants, — 
all  inconceivable  to  us. 

Embodied  Spirits  in  relation  to  Space  and 
Time. — What  precedes  is  onl}-  speculation.  We 
must  confine  our  inquiries  about  possible  material 
worlds  of  embodied  spirits,  and  the  relation  of 
spirits  to  their  embodiments,  to  what  is  found  in 
this  corner  of  Space,  and  to  what  can  reason- 
ably be  inferred  from  our  own  human  experience. 
And  what  of  human  spirits  under  relations  of 
Time  ?  Has  Spiritual  Realism  anything  to  tell 
about  them  before  the  birth  or  after  the  death 
of  their  bodies  ? 

The  Human  Spirit,  although  Embodied,  is 
Unextended,  according  to  Berkeley. — That  the 
human  spirit,  although  embodied,  must  not  be 
thought  of  as  extended  in  space  like  the  body, 
is  involved  in  Berkeley's  fundamental  principle. 
A  spirit  cannot  be  located  like  a  piece  of  matter. 
I  animate  my  body  '  all  in  the  whole  and  all  in 
every  part ' ;  so  that  it  is  practically  pervaded 
by  me.  But  this  cannot  mean  that  the  sentient, 
thinking  agent  called  myself,  occupies  a  place  in 
some  part  of  my  body,  e.g.  i\\  the  brain,  or  the 
heart,  or  the  stomach.  We  cannot  speak  of  the 
size  of  a  pain  or  the  shape  of  a  volition,  or  the 

D  49 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

colour  of  a  thought,  unless  metaphorically.  The 
identical  person  of  whom  there  is  a  conscious- 
ness in  memory  as  having  existed  continuously 
throughout  remembered  experience,  cannot  be 
conceived  as  existing  in  a  place,  although  its 
body  must.  One  must  not  think  of  the  spiritual  \ 
personality  as  something  to  be  measured  by  a 
foot-rule,  and  if  one  could,  this  would  throw  no 
light  upon  the  mystery  of  self-consciousness. 

Pre-natal  Immortality. — Again,  I  may  trace  ! 
back  the  physical  antecedents  of  my  body  before  ' 
its  birth,  as  I  can  trace  back  the  constituents 
of  any  other  mass  of  material  phenomena; 
but  I  cannot  retrace  in  memory  any  history 
of  my  spiritual  life  before  my  body  was  born. 
The  physical  antecedents  or  '  natural  causes ' 
out  of  which  my  body  has  been  evolved  may 
even  form  an  unbeginning  succession  of  changes 
in  material  phenomena.  My  spirit  has  no 
memory  of  itself  before  birth.  My  incarnation 
is  the  utmost  past  limit  of  my  self-recollection, 
through  ordinary  consciousness  at  any  rate. 
It  may  be  that  '  our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a 
forgetting,'  that  '  the  soul  that  rises  with  us,  our 
life's  star  hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting,  and 
Cometh  from  afar;  not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 
but  trailing  clouds  of  glory,  from  God  who  is 
SO 


EMBODIED  SPIRITS 

our  home.'     But  unless  pre-natal  experiences  are 

now   subconscious,   ready   to   be   revived   under 

\    future    conditions,  we  are  not   concerned  with 

;    them.      A  pre-natal    immortality   of    this    sort 

i    is    practically   non-existent,    and   a  post-mortem 

immortality   of  like   sort  would    be    practically 

personal  annihilation. 

Post-mortem    Immortality   does  not    neces- 
sarily depend  upon  Pre-natal  Immortality. — We 
have   no   right   to  assume    that   faith    in    posf- 
m^ortem  immortality  is  dependent  on  assurance 
of  pre-natal  immortality ;  although  some  ancient 
and  modern  thinkers  seem  inclined  to  make  this 
assumption.     Why  may  not  my  spirit  live  after 
death,    even   if  I   began    to    exist    individually 
only  at  birth  ?    May  a  moral  agent  not  begin  an 
individual  life  that  is  endless,  or  at  least  that 
does  not  end  when  the  matter  organically  asso- 
ciated with  it  dissolves  in  physical  death  ? 
Berkeley  on  Physical  Death. — Berkeley  does 
I   little  to  bring  spiritual  realism  to  bear  upon  the 
I    destiny  of  the  human  spirit  after  death — the  most 
stupendous  question   concerning   man   that   can 
engage   human   thought.      The   total   impotence 
of  the  appearances  that  compose  the  things  of 
sense,  including  our  own  bodies,  on  which  he  is 
fond  of  insisting,  suggests  continued  life  of  the 
51 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

spirit.  The  body,  as  conceived  by  spiritual  real- 
ism, cannot  be  the  active  cause  of  anything; 
and  so  its  dissolution  need  not  involve  the  con- 
temporaneous extinction  of  the  associated  indi- 
vidual spirit.  Here  is  Avhat  he  says  in  one  of  his 
letters  to  his  New  England  friend,  Samuel  John- 
son : — '  I  see  no  difficulty  in  conceiving  a  change 
of  state  such  as  is  vulgarly  called  Death,  as 
well  without  as  with  material  substances.  It  is 
sufficient  for  that  purpose  that  we  allow  sensible 
bodies,  i.e.  such  as  are  immediately  perceived  by 
sisht  and  touch;  the  existence  of  Avhich  I  am 
so  far  from  questioning  (as  philosophers  are  used 
to  do)  that  I  establish  it,  I  think,  upon  evident 
principles.  Now  it  seems  very  easy  to  conceive 
the  soul  or  self  to  exist  consciously  in  a  separate 
state,  i.e.  divested  from  those  limits  and  laws  of 
motion  and  perception  with  which  she  is  em- 
barrassed here,  and  to  exercise  herself  in  new 
ideas,  without  the  intervention  of  those  tangible 
things  we  call  our  bodies.  It  is  even  very 
possible  to  apprehend  how  the  soul  may  have 
ideas  of  colour  without  the  eye,  or  of  sounds 
"  without  the  ear." '  ^  That  we  might  have  all  our 
present  experiences  in  sense  in  an  unbodied  state 
is   not  incredible;  nor  that,  without  our  bodily 

*  Life  and  Letters  of  Berkeley y  p.  181. 
52 


EMBODIED  SPIRITS 

intervention,  we  might,  by  a  purely  spiritual 
volition,  produce  changes  in  sensible  phenomena, 
thus  continuing  to  make  them  signs  of  our 
thoughts  and  intentions  to  other  spirits,  bodied 
or  unbodied;  nor  that  other  spirits  in  return 
might  in  like  manner  make  signs  to  us.  But, 
unless  under  conditions  now  inconceivable,  should 
we  not  be  more  embarrassed  in  maintaining  social 
intercourse  thus  discarnate  than  when  incarnate 
as  we  now  are  ? 

Berkeley's  Negative  Argument  for  Post- 
mortem Immortality,  founded  on  the  Total 
Impotence  of  Matter. — He  has  nothing  to  say 
about  a  pre-natal  existence  of  individual  human 
spirits,  but  he  applies  his  conception  of  body  to 
strengthen  faith  in  post-mortem  immortality,  in 
this  way: — 'It  must  not  be  supposed,'  he  says,  'that 
they  who  assert  the  natural  immortality  of  the 
human  soul  are  of  opinion  that  the  soul  is  absolutely 
incapable  of  annihilation,  even  by  the  infinite 
power  of  the  Creator  who  gave  it  being ;  but  only 
that  it  is  not  liable  to  he  dissolved  by  the  ordin- 
ary laivs  of  matter  and  motion.  They  indeed 
who  hold  the  soul  of  man  to  be  only  a  thin  vital 
flame,  or  a  system  of  vital  spirits,  make  it  perish- 
able and  corruptible  with  the  body;  since  there 
is  nothing  more  easily  dissipated  than  such  a 
53 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

(compound)  being,  which  it  is  naturally  impos- 
sible should  survive  the  ruin  of  the  tabernacle 
wherein  it  is  inclosed.    But  it  hath  been  made 
evident   that   bodies,  of  what  frame   or  texture 
soever,  are  only  passive  ideas  of  the  mind ;  which 
is   more  distant   and  heterogeneous  from  them 
than  light   is  from  darkness.     Nothing   can   be 
plainer  than  that  the  motions,  changes,  decays, 
dissolutions,  which  hourly  befall  natural  bodies 
(and  which  is  what  we  mean  by  the  course  of 
nature)  cannot  possibly  affect  active,  simple,  un- 
compounded  substance  such  as  we  are.'  ^    Such  a 
being  therefore  is  indissoluble  by  any  force  in  the 
material  universe,  which  per  se  is  powerless.     But 
this  is  only  negative  evidence  of  the  continued 
life  of  the  spirit,  after  so  unique  and  unparalleled  an 
event  as  the  death  of  his  body  is  to  the  owner  of 
that  body.     One   still  asks  whether  bodily  dis- 
solution may  not  be   the   sensible   sign,   if   not 
the  cause,  of  the  extinction  of  the  spiritual  indi- 
viduality ;  and  the  only  reply  would  be  that  there 
is  no  sufficient  reason  for  putting  this  interpreta- 
tion on  the  signs  presented  in  bodily  dissolution. 
The    Physical   Order  in  Contrast  with  the 
Moral  Disorder. — But  are  there  not  positive  signs 
that  death  of  their  bodies  does  not  mean  contem- 

^  Principles,  sec.  141. 

54 


EMBODIED  SPIRITS 

poraneous  extinction  of  human  spirits  now  incar- 
nate? Consider  the  state  of  those  spirits  during 
their  short  embodiment  between  birth  and  death. 
Their  disordered  moral  condition,  and  the  unequal 
possession  of  happiness  in  proportion  to  good- 
ness, gravely  contrasts  with  the  steady  obedience 
to  physical  law  in  the  material  world.  The 
world  of  the  senses  is  in  continuous  orderly 
natural  evolution;  our  spiritual  world  is  at  its 
best  an  often  interrupted  struggle  towards  in- 
tellectual and  moral  order.  Natural  order  is 
universal;  moral  order  is  unattained.  The  voice 
of  the  patriarch  expresses  the  thought  of  many : 
'  Let  the  day  perish  wherein  I  was  born ;  let 
darkness  dwell  upon  it;  let  it  not  be  joined 
unto  the  days  of  the  year.  Wherefore  is  light 
given  to  him  that  is  in  misery,  and  life  unto  the 
bitter  in  soul ;  which  long  for  death  and  it  cometh 
not,  and  dig  for  it  more  than  for  hid  treasures ; 
which  rejoice  exceedingly  and  are  glad  when  they 
can  find  the  grave.'  If  the  total  impotence  of 
their  bodies  offers  at  the  most  negative  evi- 
dence of  what  happens  to  the  spirit  when  the 
body  dissolves,  may  not  this  moral  disorder  afford 
to  the  theist  some  signs  of  the  inadequacy  of 
our  present  condition  to  our  final  destiny,  under 
Omnipotent  Goodness  ? 

55 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

A  'Preponderance'  of  Goodness  and  Happi- 
ness not  enough. — Spiritual  realism  in  Berkeley 
adds  little  that  is  new  or  distinctive  of  him- 
self in  answer  to  this  question.  He  points  out 
that  there  is  a  '  preponderance  of  happiness '  on 
the  whole,  and  he  suggests  that  sentient  pleasure 
is  not  after  all  the  purpose  of  a  human  life.  But 
this  does  not  meet  the  dilemma  that  confronts 
us  when  we  are  asked  whether  the  presence  of 
Evil  in  any  form,  or  to  any  extent,  is  reconcil- 
able with  omnipotent  goodness  being  at  the  heart 
of  the  universe.  The  existence  of  one  wicked  man, 
or  of  one  miserable  man,  seems  as  irreconcilable 
with  omnipotent  and  omniscient  goodness  as  the 
existence  of  millions.  A  mere  'preponderance' 
suggests  defect  either  of  goodness  or  of  power ; 
unless  a  universe  morally  perfect  from  the  begin- 
ning involves  a  contradiction,  for  this  even 
Omnipotence  cannot  overcome. 

Berkeley  on  the  Mixture  of  Pain  and  Happi- 
ness in  the  World.— This  is  what  Berkeley  has 
to  say : — '  As  for  the  mixture  of  pain  and  un- 
easiness which  is  in  the  world,  pursuant  to  the 
general  laws  of  nature,  and  the  actions  of  finite 
imperfect  spirits,  this  in  the  state  we  are  in  at 
present,  is  indispensably  necessary  to  our  well- 
being.     But  our  prospects  are  too  narrow.     We 

56 


EMBODIED  SPIRITS 

take,  for  instance,  the  idea  of  some  one  particular 
pain  into  our  thoughts,  and  account  it  evil ; 
whereas  if  we  enlarge  our  view,  so  as  to  compre- 
hend the  various  ends,  connections,  and  depend- 
encies of  things ;  on  what  occasions,  and  in  what 
proportions  we  are  affected  with  pain  or  pleasure ; 
the  nature  of  human  freedom;  and  the  design 
with  which  we  are  put  into  this  world, — we  shall 
be  forced  to  acknowledge  that  those  particular 
things  which,  considered  in  themselves,  appear 
to  be  evil,  have  the  nature  of  good,  when  con- 
sidered linked  with  the  whole  system  of  beings.'  ^ 
This  suggests  that  the  sorrows,  if  not  the  sins  of 
mankind,  are  consequences  of  the  steadiness  of 
natural  order,  and  also  that  evil  is  an  issue  of 
the  independent  action  of  human  agents,  for 
which  they  alone  are  therefore  responsible. 

May  not  a  slowly  progressive  Moral  Uni- 
verse be  more  Divine  than  one  that  is  Per- 
fect from  the  Beginning  ? —  May  it  not  be  that 
the  moral  disorder  now  found  on  this  planet 
signifies,  not  that  we  are  living  in  an  immorally- 
constituted  universe,  but  rather  that  the  pref^ent 
life  of  the  moral  agents  who  inhabit  it  is  purga- 
torial; not  perfect,  but  on  the  way  to  perfection; 
through  struggle  and  suffering,  and  frequent  re- 

'  Principles,  sec.  158. 

57 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

lapse — consequences  of  the  moral  freedom  which 
implies  power  of  moral  agents  to  make  them- 
selves bad  ?  May  not  this  purgatorial  advance 
towards  the  perfect  man,  instead  of  perfection 
from  the  beginning,  consist  with  theistic  optim- 
ism, while  it  is  in  harmony  with  the  slow 
and  gradual  evolution  of  nature  ?  May  it  not 
be  that  moral  and  intellectual  perfection  of  men 
from  the  beginning  is  even  inconsistent  with 
Omnipotent  Goodness  ?  A  world  of  moral  agents, 
encouraged  to  struggle  through  trial  and  temp- 
tation towards  their  own  spiritual  perfection  or 
salvation,  in  co-operation  with  the  Omnipotent 
Spirit,  may  be  a  deeper  and  truer  expression  of 
the  rationality  and  morality  immanent  in  the 
universe  than  a  universe  empty  of  moral  agents, 
even  with  all  the  risks  of  failure  which  their  inde- 
pendent agency  involves.  The  accomplishment 
of  supreme  beneficent  purpose  for  each  individual 
agent,  through  the  independent  will  entrusted 
to  each — imperfectly  realised  in  this  life — may  be 
conceived  as  the  issue,  not  of  present  struggles  and 
failures  only,  but  of  a  succession  of  probations  of 
which  the  present  is  only  one.  '  Work  out  your 
own  salvation  with  fear ;  for  it  is  God  that  work- 
eth  in  you.'  The  Divine  Ideal  may  be  a  universe, 
in   this   slow  way   of  moral   trial   and  struggle, 

58 


EMBODIED  SPIRITS 

becoming  gradually  more  and  more  valuable 
morally.  But  of  this  later  on,  in  connection  with 
the  moral  character  of  the  Universal  Mind. 

*  This  Mortal  must  put  on  Immortality '  in  a 
Progressive  Moral  World. — Whether  or  not  this 
is  the  explanation  of  the  sin  and  sorrow  in  our 
present  world,  their  existence  seems  to  show  that 
the  earthly  life  of  man  is  not  the  whole,  that 
the  death  of  the  body  does  not  mean  extinction 
of  the  spirit.  Can  present  evil  on  this  planet 
be  otherwise  reconciled  with  Omnipotent  Good- 
ness being  at  the  heart  of  the  Whole?  There 
must  surely  be  a  larger  and  purer  life  than  is 
yet  visible.  'This  mortal  must  put  on  immor- 
tality.' More  than  eternally  disordered  lives  is 
implied  in  our  final  faith. 

The  Natural  and  the  Spiritual  Body.— Does 
post-mortem  life  mean  embodied  life  ?  And  is  it 
too  a  social  life ;  or  if  so,  is  future  social  inter- 
course maintained  as  in  the  present  material 
world;  or  by  another  kind  of  sense  symbolism 
having  no  analogy  to  the  present,  its  qualities 
being  all  different  from  those  which  appear  in 
our  present  organs,  and  therefore  unimaginable 
by  us,  like  the  sense  world  of  Micromegas  ?  If 
we  are  really  living  and  moving,  and  having  our 
being  in  a  universe  charged  throughout  with 
59 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

Omnipotent  Goodness,  must  there  not  be  suf- 
ficient analogy  of  the  future  with  the  present 
to  connect  personal  identity  in  the  life  after 
death  with  the  present  social  environment  ?  The 
apostolic  rebuke  of  those  who  ask,  '  How  the 
dead  are  raised  up  ?  and  with  what  body  do  they 
come  ? '  is  satisfied  with  the  vague  reply,  that  the 
'natural  body'  sown  in  death  becomes  after 
death  '  a  spiritual  body,'  somehow  different  from 
the  present  one. 

Are  Present  Socialties  dissolved  for  ever  by 
Death  ? — But  what  of  human  spirits  who  have 
been  associated  in  this  hfe  by  special  ties  of  love  ? 
Are  those  ties  for  ever  dissolved  by  death  ?  Are 
the  human  associations  of  family  and  friendship 
only  transitory  expedients  to  meet  mundane 
wants  ?  Is  their  final  dissolution  consistent  either 
with  continued  personal  identity,  or  with  the  per- 
fect beneficence  of  the  universal  order  ? 

'  It  is  an  old  belief 
That  on  some  solemn  shore, 
Beyond  the  sphere  of  grief, 
Dear  friends  shall  meet  once  more. 

'  Beyond  the  sphere  of  time, 
And  sin  and  fate's  control, 
Serene  in  changeless  prime 
Of  body  and  of  soul. 

60 


EMBODIED  SPIRITS 

*  That  creed  I  fain  would  keep, 
That  hope  I  '11  not  forego  ; 
Eternal  be  the  sleep, 
Unless  Ave  waken  so.' 

Spiritual  Realism  and  these  Questions. — These 
questions  carry  us  to  the  borderland  of  the 
knowable.  Materialistic  realism  closes  the  pro- 
spect. Its  universe  is  throughout  'a  riddle,  an 
enigma,  an  inexplicable  mystery.  Doubt,  un- 
certainty, suspense  of  judgment,'  appear  as  its 
only  issue.  Only  in  a  spiritually  constituted 
universe  can  we  even  ask,  what  the  moral  char- 
acter of  the  Supreme  Power  is,  and  what  the 
spiritual  relations  of  the  Universal  Spirit  are  to 
the  struggling,  striving,  and  sorrowing  spirits  of 
men.  In  a  finally  material  reality  there  is  no 
room  for  this  question.  Purpose — good,  evil, 
and  indifferent — is  all  excluded.  Under  spiritual 
realism  we  can  at  least  ask  whether  the  universal 
spiritual  purpose  is  optimist,  or  pessimist,  or  in- 
different. Can  man,  with  his  Ihnited  intellectual 
faculty  and  experience,  dispose  in  any  positive 
way  of  the  final  problem  of  the  universe  ?  This 
supreme  question  and  Berkeley's  relation  to  it 
belong  to  the  next  chapter. 


6i 


CHAPTER  IV     / 

GOD,   OR   THE   UNIVERSAL  MIND,   AND   THEISTIC 
OPTIMISM 

Nature  virtually  Supernatural. — The  essentially 
spiritual  reality  of  the  material  universe  is  the 
distinctive  teaching  of  Spiritual  Realisna.  The 
spiritual  realist  finds  all  that  he  sees,  his  own 
body  included,  to  be  appearances  that  depend  for 
their  actual  and  active  reality  upon  the  percep- 
tions and  the  free  agency  of  conscious  Spirit. 
Their  dependence  upon  human  spirits  is  only 
occasional  and  interrupted — for  men  come  and 
go,  realising  now  this  and  now  that,  in  their 
perceptions;  and  the  changes  due  to  their  indi- 
vidual volitions  are  comparatively  few  and  un- 
certain among  the  changes  in  nature.  But  the 
reality  of  the  things  of  sense  is  not  thus  occa- 
sional and  interrupted.  The  material  universe 
is  constantly  known,  and  constantly  kept  in 
natural  order,  by  the  Universal  Spirit ;  it  may  be 
in  a  natural  evolution  that  is  unbeginning  and 
62 


GOD,  OR  THE  UNIVERSAL  MIND 

endless,  its  laws  being  the  visible  expression  of 
Supreme  Active  Reason. 

The  Physical  Cosmos  and  the  Moral  Chaos. — 
The  world  of  human  life  is  a  contrast  to  the 
material  world.  Here  much  that  is,  ought  not  to 
he.  The  moral  order  is  disturbed;  the  physical 
order  is  steadily  maintained.  This  fact  is  the 
supreme  riddle  of  existence.  The  material  world 
is  wholly  obedient  to  its  natural  order :  the 
spirits  of  men  are  found  resisting  the  moral 
order ;  and  often  reward  seems  to  go  to  the  dis- 
obedient, while  suffering  is  the  lot  of  the  righteous. 
Is  there  room,  under  these  conditions,  for  the 
faith  that  we  are  having  our  being  in  a  universe 
charged  with  Omnipotent  Goodness  ?  Is  implicit 
trust  in  the  rationality  and  morality  of  the  imi- 
verse  consistent  with  these  ominous  conditions  ? 
And  what  follows  if  final  trust  in  the  spiritually 
constituted  universe,  of  which  we  are  a  part,  and 
on  which  we  continually  depend,  is  therefore  not 
possible  ?  Are  we  not  involved  in  Pyrrhonism 
with  its  total  doubt  and  despair  ? 

The  Idea  of  God. —  The  moral  character  of  the 
Omnipotent  Spirit,  in  whom  we  live  and  have 
our  being,  is  thus  the  supreme  consideration 
under  spiritual  realism.  Materialism  (necessarily) 
turns   at  last  upon    blind    abstract   force,   alien 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

to  all  moral  conceptions.  The  living  God,  neither 
dead  matter  nor  abstract  idea,  is  the  final  unity 
of  spiritual  realism.  '  God  is  a  mind,  not  an 
abstract  idea  compounded  of  inconsistencies  and 
prescinded  from  all  real  things,  as  some  moderns 
understand    abstraction,    but    a    really    existing 

Spirit Whether  the  Supreme  Mind  be  abstracted 

from  the  sensible  world,  and  considered  by  itself 
as  distinct  from  and  presiding  over  the  created 
system;  or  whether  the  whole  universe,  including 
mind  together  with  the  mundane  body,  is  con- 
ceived to  be  God,  and  the  creatures  to  be  partial 
manifestations  of  the  divine  essence — there  is  no 
atheism  in  either  case,  Avhatever  misconceptions 
there  may  be,  as  long  as  Mind  or  Intellect  is  un- 
derstood to  preside  over,  govern,  and  conduct  the 
whole  frame  of  things.'  ^  The  theism  of  Berkeley 
is  large  enough  to  comprehend  all  who  see  the 
immanence  of  Active  Reason  in  the  material 
and  the  human  world.  It  is  atheism  only  if  the 
universe,  in  its  immanent  Spirit,  is  either  diabolic 
or  indifferent  to  moral  purpose,  when  we  find  our- 
selves in  an  untrustworthy  universe,  a  universe 
unfit  to  be  reasoned  about  or  acted  in.  A  theisti- 
cally  constituted  universe  is  optimist  at  the  root.- 

1  Siris,  sec.  323,  328. 

2  Argued  in  my  Philosophy  of  Theism,  part  iii.  chap.  2,  and 
passim. 

64 


GOD,  OR  THE  UNIVERSAL  MIND 

The  Atheistic  Gospel  of  Death. — That  without 
our  own  consent  we  have  been  born  into  an 
immoral  universe,  and  tliat  the  only  escape 
is  through  final  extinction  by  death  of  the  un- 
happy individual  who  made  his  appearance 
at  birth,  is  a  gospel  that  has  been  offered  to 
suffering  mankind  in  all  ages  and  in  different 
forms,  as  by  Buddha  in  the  East  and  by  Lucretius 
in  Greece.  But  a  gospel  of  Death  is  surely  a 
shallow  gospel.  If  the  constitution  of  things  is 
consistent  Avith  our  introduction  at  birth  into  a 
life  so  disordered  as  that  we  crave  for  death  to 
dissolve  self-consciousness  for  ever,  may  not 
death  after  all  be  only  the  introduction  to  another 
stage  on  a  still  downward  journey?  If  the  issue 
of  birth  is  so  disappointing,  there  is  no  evidence 
that  the  issue  of  death,  in  an  atheistic  universe, 
is  to  give  relief.  The  span  of  a  human  life  spent 
between  a  pre-natal  and  a  post-7)io7iem  eternity 
remains  a  mystery,  without  ground  for  comfort 
in  its  termination.  We  did  not,  by  our  own 
responsible  will,  become  individual  persons,  and 
we  do  not  know  that  by  death  we  can  get  out 
of  suffering  personality. 

Polytheism  and  Manicheism.  —  Polytheism, 
with  its  plurality  of  finite  '  deities,'  although 
ministering  to  the  religious  instinct  in  its  earlier 

E  65 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

and  cruder  stages,  is  virtually  atheistic.  Its 
'gods'  are  not  eternal,  and  to  none  of  them  is 
omnipotent  goodness  attributed.  At  the  most 
they  are  only  magnified  men,  objects  of  super- 
stitious awe,  ready  to  be  propitiated  by  offerings, 
hypothetical  entities,  presupposing,  like  all  else 
that  is  finite,  the  existence  of  Omnipotent  Spirit. 
The  polytheist's  gods  are  not  God  in  the  distinc- 
tive and  unique  meaning  of  the  word.  At  the 
utmost,  like  human  spirits,  they  can  only  be  part 
of  the  universe  in  which  the  true  God  must  still 
be  omnipresent.  If  the  gods  of  polytheism  really 
existed,  their  existence  would  presuppose  what 
the  monotheist  means  by  God,  as  much  as  the 
existence  of  the  world  of  the  senses  and  of  man- 
kind involves  this  presupposition.  And  the  same 
may  be  said  of  Manicheism.  None  of  these  faiths 
afford  anchorage  for  final  faith.  They  are  in 
vogue  only  when  religion  and  intelligence  are  in 
a  crude  undeveloped  state,  '  without  God  in  the 
world.'  Neither  of  the  two  antagonistic  'gods' 
of  Manicheism  is  supreme  and  absolute. 

Abstract  Deism. — The  abstract  God  admitted 
by  the  two  'minute  philosophers,'  in  Berkeley's 
Dialogue,  is  not  less  atheistic.  To  allow  that 
God  exists,  while  denying  that  God  is  practically 
knowable,  is  only  a  pohte  retention  of  the  name 
66 


GOD,  OR  THE  UNIVERSAL  MIND 

after   emptying  it   of   meaning.     These   minute 
philosophers  grant  that  the  mere  being  of  God 
is  a  point  of  no  consequence;   an  agnostic  may 
concede  it  as  a   matter   of  indifference.     '  The 
great  point  is  in  what  sense  the  word  God  is  to 
be  taken  in.     The  very  Epicureans  allowed  the 
being  of  gods,  but  they  were  indolent  gods,  un- 
concerned with  human  affairs.     Hobbes  allowed 
a  corporeal  God ;  and  Spinoza  held  the  universe 
to  be  god.     I  could  wish  indeed  the  word  God 
were  omitted,  because  in  most  minds  it  is  coupled 
with  a  sort  of  superstitious  awe,  the  very  root  of 
all  religion.     I  shall  not,  nevertheless,  be  much 
disturbed  though  the  name  be  retained,  and  the 
being  of  God  allowed,  in  any  sense  but  that  of  a 
Mind  which  knows  all  things,  like  some  judge  or 
magistrate  with  infinite  observation  and  intelli- 
gence.    The  belief  of  God  in  this  sense  fills  a 
mind  with  scruples,  lays  him  under  constraint, 
and  embitters  his  very  being.     But  in  another 
sense  it  may  be  attended  with  no  great  ill  con- 
sequence. .  .  .  Diagoras,  a  man  of  much  reading 
and  inquiry,  discovered  that,  once  upon  a  time, 
the    most    profound    and     speculative    divines, 
finding  it  impossible  to  reconcile  the  attributes 
of  God,  taken  in  the  common  sense,  or  in  any 
known  sense,  with  human  reason  and  the  appear- 
67 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

ances  of  things,  taught  that  the  words  knowledge, 
wisdom,  goodness,  and  such  like,  when  spoken  of 
the  Deity,  must  be  understood  in  a  quite  distinct 
sense  from  what  they  signify  in  the  vulgar  accep- 
tation, and  from  anything  that  we  can  form  a 
notion  of  or  conceive.  Hence  whatever  objections 
might  be  made  against  the  attributes  of  God 
they  easily  solved,  by  denying  that  those  attri- 
butes belonged  to  God  in  this  or  that  or  any 
known  particular  sense;  which  was  the  same  thing 
as  to  deny  they  belonged  to  Him  at  all.  And 
thus  denying  the  attributes  of  God,  they  in  effect 
denied  His  being,  though  perhaps  they  were  not 
aware  of  it.'  ^  In  short,  God  can  lie,  or  can  be 
unjust  and  cruel,  in  the  human  meaning  of  those 
words,  and  yet  '  good,'  in  this  transcendental  use 
of  the  word  goodness. 

A  Slowly  Progressive  Moral  Universe  may 
be  more  truly  Divine  than  One  Perfect  from 
the  Beginning. — On  the  other  hand,  in  Berkeley's 
spiritual  realism  all  that  is  real  necessarily 
culminates  in  Omnipotent  Spirit,  percipient  and 
active,  presupposed  (and  this  in  the  human  mean- 
ing of  the  words  'spirit'  and  'omnipotence')  in 
the  continuous  orderly  reality  of  the  material 
world.       Nature    is    accordingly    a    system    of 

^  See  Alciphron,  Dial.  iv.  sec.  16,  17. 

68 


GOD,  OR  THE  UNIVERSAL  MIND 

interpretable  signs,  in  and  through  which  God 
is  constantly  speaking,  and  which  men  are  con- 
stantly interpreting,  for  the  purposes  of  daily 
life,  or  in  the  formation  of  science;  so  show- 
ing that  they  are  in  intercourse  with  Intelli- 
gence sufficiently  akin  to  their  own  for  all 
human  purposes,  whatever  infinite  divine  omni- 
science in  itself  may  be.  '  Thus  the  phenomena 
of  nature,  which  strike  on  the  senses  and  can 
be  interpreted  by  man,  form  not  only  a  magni- 
ficent spectacle,  but  a  most  coherent,  enter- 
taining, and  instructive  discourse.  Natural  pro- 
ductions, it  is  true,  are  not  all  equally  perfect. 
But  neither  doth  it  suit  Avith  the  order  of  things 
that  they  should  be  thus  perfect.  General  rules 
or  laws  of  nature  are  necessary  to  make  the  world 
intelligible,  and  from  the  constant  observance  of 
such  rules  evils  will  sometimes  unavoidably  ensue; 
things  will  be  produced  at  slow  lengths  of  time, 
and  arrive  at  different  degrees  of  perfection.' 
These  words  of  Berkeley  suggest  that  a  moral 
universe  which  gradually  increases  in  value  may 
be  more  divine  than  a  moral  universe  that  is 
perfect  from  the  beginning.  It  presents  human 
personalities,  educated  in  a  divine  school  by 
struggle  and  suffering,  rather  than  always  perfect 
— co-operating  in  a  slow,  progressive,  often  inter- 
69 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

rupted  evolution,  as  suggested  in  the  preceding 
chapter. 

Berkeley's  Liberal  Interpretation  of  Theistic 
Faith. — The  immanence  or  omnipresence  of  God 
in  the  material  universe,  and  in  the  human  spirit, 
with  the  final  harmony  of  the  Whole,  is,  as  we 
have  seen,  a  thought  apparent  in  Siris,  along  with 
a  generous  inclination  to  welcome  even  faint 
approaches  to  theistic  faith.  If  any  one  should 
deny  that  God  knows  anything  external  to  Him- 
self, should  this,  he  asks,  be  justly  counted  an 
atheistic  opinion  ?  '  Might  we  not  conceive  that 
God  may  be  said  to  be  All  in  divers  senses;  as 
He  is  the  origin  of  all  beings ;  as  the  vov<i  is  the 
voijrd,  a  doctrine  both  of  Plato  and  Aristotle; 
as  the  vov<i  comprehends  and  orders  and  sustains 
the  whole  mundane  system.  Aristotle  declares 
that  the  divine  force  permeates  the  entire  uni- 
verse.' ^  The  influence  of  Berkeley's  Neoplatonic 
■  studies  in  his  old  age  is  here  again  apparent. 

Berkeley's  Last  Words  in  Philosophy. — In  the 
end  Berkeley  holds  back  in  awe  on  the  border 
line  that  limits  the  intellectual  vision  of  man. 
His  last  words  in  Siris  express  in  a  tone  of 
philosophical  eloquence  his  view  of  the  final 
human  answers.    '  In  this  mortal  life  we  must  be 

1  See  Siris,  sees.  328,  also  300,  325,  327. 
70 


GOD,  OR  THE  UNIVERSAL  MIND 

satisfied  to  make  the  best  of  those  glimpses  within 
our  reach.  It  is  Plato's  remark  that  while  we 
sit  still  we  are  never  the  wiser,  but  going  into  the 
river  and  moving  up  and  down  is  the  way  to  dis- 
cover its  depths  and  shallows.  If  we  exercise  and 
bestir  ourselves,  we  may  even  here  discover  some- 
thing. The  eye  by  long  use  comes  to  see  even  in 
the  darkest  cavern.  Truth  is  the  cry  of  all,  but 
the  game  of  a  few.  Certainly  where  it  is  the  chief 
passion,  it  doth  not  give  way  to  vulgar  cares  and 
views ;  nor  is  it  contented  with  a  little  ardour  in 
the  early  times  of  life,  active  perhaps  to  pursue, 
but  not  so  fit  to  weigh  and  revise.  He  that  would 
make  a  real  progress  in  knowledge  must  devote 
his  age  as  well  as  youth,  the  later  growth  as  well 
as  first  fruits,  at  the  altar  of  truth.'  ^ 

Man  needs  a  Morally  Trustworthy  Universe, 
as  alone  fit  to  be  reasoned  about.— Omniscient 
and  omnipotent  Spirit  at  the  root  of  all,  and 
animating  all,  is  Berkeley's  final  conception.  This 
is  what  he  finds  in  '  esse  is  percipi'  combined  with 
the  recognition  of  power  exclusively  in  Spirit. 
But  perfect  goodness  of  the  Universal  Spirit  is 
not  necessarily  the  consequence  of  the  final 
spirituality  of  the  Real.  The  Spirit  may  be 
diabolic    or    indifferent.      So    for    man    in    his 

1  Si7-iti,  sees.  367,  368. 

71 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

practical    relations    to   the   universe,   the   moral 
character   of  God   is    the   urgent    question.      It 
makes   the   differences   between  final    hope  and 
final    despair    in    the    life    of    man    during    his 
momentary  embodiment  on  this  planet.     If  the 
omnipotent  Spirit  is  morally  untrustworthy,  omni- 
potence and  omniscience  only  aggravate  doubt  and 
despair.      The  ominous  facts  that  appear  in  the 
history  and  present  state  of  mankind  may  seem 
irreconcilable    with   Goodness    in   the   Supreme 
Power ;  yet  unless  the  Supreme  Power  is  morally 
'perfect   the  universe   is  not  fit  to   live  in.      Its 
ultimate  intelligibility  and  morality   are   postu- 
lated in  our  title  to  trust  even  in  its  natural  order. 
Berkeley  fails  to  show  how  we  are  assured 
that    the    Universe     is    Ultimately     Good. — 
Answers  to  the  questions  thus  raised  are  hardly 
found  in  Berkeley.     His  exposition  of  Spiritual 
Realism  adds  little  to  our  resources  for  meeting 
them.     It  adds  emphasis,  however,  to  our  right 
to  consider  them ;  for  they  are  relevant  only  so 
far  as  we  are  entitled  to  think  of  the  universe 
as   finally  a  spiritual  reality;   fit,    therefore,   to 
be  tested  as  to  its  moral  order.    Material  Realism 
cannot  ask  what  the  moral  character  of  Matter 
is;  and   Matter  per  se  is   its   only  deity.      AVe 
have   seen   how   Berkeley  meets    the    difficulty 
72 


GOD,  OR  THE  UNIVERSAL  MIND 

which  some  find  in  the  gradual  methods  of 
natural  evolution,  when  they  treat  tardy  pro- 
gress instead  of  perfection  from  the  first, 
as  inconsistent  with  the  moral  perfection  of 
God.  And  he  offers  a  similar  reply  to  the 
objector  who  points  to  '  the  miseries  incident  to 
human  life,'  as  an  argument  that '  Nature  is  not 
actuated  by  perfect  wisdom  and  goodness.'  He 
explains  human  evils  by  the  fact  that  the  Supreme 
Agent  follows  general  rules.  This,  even  more 
than  if  all  were  perfect  from  the  beginning,  speaks, 
he  thinks,  for  the  wisdom  and  goodness  of  the 
Omnipotent  Spirit.  He  asks  us  to  enlarge  our 
view  of  the  proportion  in  which  we  are  affected 
with  pain  and  pleasure ;  the  purpose  of  our  pre- 
sent embodiment;  and  our  freedom  in  action 
and  consequent  personal  responsibility  for  our 
acts. 

Preponderance  of  Good  in  the  Moral  World 
is  not  enough  under  Omnipotence. — '  Preponder- 
ance' of  good  in  this  corner  of  the  universe  is 
what  he  thinks  he  finds,  when  he  tries  to  measure 
the  proportions  of  the  good  and  the  bad.  But 
this  fact,  if  granted,  Avould  fail  to  reconcile  perfect 
goodness  with  absolute  power.  Instead  of  a  halt- 
ing inference  from  a  necessarily  limited  number 
of  observed  facts,  must  not  the  rationality  and 
73 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

morality  of  the  universe  be  (at  least  uncon- 
sciously) presupposed,  as  the  condition  of  our 
having  any  trustworthy  intercourse  with  it,  even 
through  our  senses  ?  Its  supposed  sense  sym- 
bolism is  not  worth  trying  to  interpret,  if  it  may 
become  of  a  sudden  all  hollow  and  deluding. 
Reason  immanent  in  the  physical  order  of  things, 
on  which  all  the  natural  sciences  proceed,  is 
not  guaranteed  in  a  limited  past  experience  of 
a  universe  which  we  enter  as  strangers  to  its 
necessities;  unless  we  can  be  justified  in  taking 
for  granted  that  our  surroundings  '  cannot  lie,'  be- 
cause the  omnipotent  Spirit  cannot  deceive,  being 
perfectly  good,  and  good  to  all.  Unless  this  can 
be  postulated,  reason  cannot  be  applied  to  the 
facts  of  life.  An  immorally  constituted  universe 
would  be  uninterpretable. 

No  Security  for  Cosmic  Order  in  an  Immoral 
or  non-Moral  Universe. — A  universe  that  is  trust- 
worthy enough  to  be  interpreted  and  reasoned 
about  scientifically,  presupposes  that  the  World- 
Spirit  'cannot  lie,'  that  He  cannot  contradict 
truth,  and  justice,  and  beneficence.  If  He 
could  there  would  be  no  security  in  spiritual 
realism  even  for  the  continuance  of  cosmic  order, 
not  to  speak  of  beneficence  in  the  final  destiny  of 
our  now  embodied  lives.  Under  the  atheistic  con- 
74 


GOD,  OR  THE  UNIVERSAL  MIND 

ception,  faith  and  hope,  sustained  as  the  springs 
of  life  in  an  ethically  constituted  universe,  dis- 
solve in  universal  doubt  and  pessimist  despair. 

Is  Evil  in  the  World  necessarily  inconsistent 
with  Perfection  in  God  ? — Unless  the  absurdity 
of  final  moral  faith  can  be  demonstrated,  it  is 
reasonable  to  rest  in  faith  and  hope.  But  does  the 
appearance  of  sin  and  suffering  on  this  planet 
demonstrate  that  faith  in  the  perfect  ethical  con- 
stitution of  the  world  must  be  irrational?  Is 
evil  in  mankind  necessarily  inconsistent  with 
perfect  wisdom  and  goodness  in  the  Omnipotent  ? 

Is  the  Existence  of  Finite  Agents  free  to 
Act  Responsibly  consistent  with  Omnipotent 
Goodness  ? — This  question  recalls  Berkeley's  un- 
developed hint  about  •'  enlarging  our  view,'  so  as 
to  take  in  '  human  freedom '  and  the  part  which 
morally  responsible  agents  play  in  this  world.^ 
Does  the  existence  of  persons  who  are  free 
to  make  themselves  good  or  bad  contradict 
absolutely  goodness  of  purpose  at  the  root  of 
all?  Can  God  rightly  delegate  power  to  act 
responsibly  to  persons  ?    If  man's  moral  respon- 

1  See  Principles,  sec.  153,  also  Siris,  sec.  257.  The  ambigu- 
ity of  the  term  'freedom'  should  be  noted;  for  it  is  some- 
times applied  (as  here)  to  the  power  of  moral  agents  to  make 
themselves  wicked,  and  in  other  cases  to  their  moral  perfection 
or  liberation  from  evil. 

75 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

sibility  for  what  he  does  means  that  he  is  the 
creator  of  acts  for  which  he  can  be  justly  con- 
demned, does  this  subtract  from  the  perfection  of 
the  Universal  Spirit  ? 

Is  not  a  Bar  to  the  Existence  of  Free  Agents 
a  Greater  Limitation  of  Divine  Power  and  Good- 
ness ? — One  may  ask  in  return  whether  inability 
to  admit  moral  agents  into  the  universe  does  not 
involve  a  greater  limitation  of  omnipotence  ?  And 
the  fact  that  men  "must  be  creators  of  acts  for 
which  they  are  responsible  does  not  mean  that 
they  create  the  agents  to  whom  the  acts  are  finally 
referable.  We  all  enter  life  without  our  own  Teave, 
and  therefore  we  are  not  responsible  for  begin- 
ning to  live;  but  this  is  no  bar  to  our  acts  of 
will  afterwards  being  ours,  so  that  we  can  be 
justly  condemned  when  they  are  evil.  Here 
Spiritual  Realism  contrasts  fundamentally  with 
Spinoza. 

Basis  of  Theistic  Optimism. — Optimism  in 
the  final  constitution  of  the  universe  is  implied 
in  its  rationality  and  rectitude;  and  this  in  its 
turn  is  only  another  way  of  expressing  its 
ultimately  theistic  constitution.  Theistic  optim- 
ism is  thus  at  the  root  of  the  faith  and  hope 
which  intercourse  with  the  universe  presup- 
poses. That  this  intercourse  Avould  otherwise  be 
76 


GOD,  OR  THE  UNIVERSAL  MIND 

irrational,  and  therefore  paralysed,  is  the  argu- 
ment which  in  the  end  sustains  theistic  optim- 
ism. Reason  is  paralysed  by  the  supposition 
that  truth  and  falsehood,  beneficence  and  cruelty, 
justice  and  its  opposite — according  to  the  highest 
human  conceptions  of  these  virtues^ — are  in- 
different in  the  universal  system,  and  are  im- 
posed on  man  only  by  human  limitations;  or 
that  our  ethical  conceptions,  in  the  human 
meaning  of  duty  and  moral  responsibility,  can 
be  subject  to  arbitrary  will.  The  character  of 
the  Omnipotent  Spirit  would  otherwise  be  no 
security  for  the  permanence  of  even  physical 
order.  If  transcendent  or  divine  morality  can 
consist  with  what  man  must  condemn  as  un- 
righteous, then  the  faith  that  inspires  science 
and  human  life  must  die. 

May  not  this  Mortal  Life  be  Purgatorial  ? — 
Berkeley's  reference  to  slow  and  often  interrupted 
progress  in  the  world  of  moral  agents  suggests 
how  the  sin  and  sorroAv  found  on  this  planet  may 
consist  with  optimism  at  the  root  of  the  uni- 
versal order.  For  may  not  gradual  amelioration 
through  power  to  resist  good  be  involved  in  the 

^  It  must  be  noted  that  human  conceptions  of  wliat  is 
reasonable  and  morally  right,  crude  at  first,  are  in  progressive 
development. 

77 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

optimist  ideal ;  necessitated  '  goodness '  in  a  finite 
agent  not  being  moral  goodness  ?  May  not  moral 
perfection  be  finally  attainable  only  with  free 
play  of  the  individual  will,  and  gradual  educa- 
tion through  suffering  and  failures  ?  May  not  a 
prolonged  purgatory,  begun  if  not  completed  in 
this  embodied  life  on  earth,  continued  it  may 
be  through  unknown  periods  after  the  death  of 
these  bodies, — may  not  this  be  the  optimist  way 
to  final  perfection  of  the  individual  character  ? 
At  any  rate  is  one  justified  in  answering  these 
questions  with  a  dogmatic  negation  ?  The  end- 
less life  in  its  earlier  stages  may  be  essentially 
purgatorial ;  and  the  purgatorial  discipline  may  be 
more  or  less  prolonged  in  different  individuals  in 
proportion  to  individual  resistance. 

The  Universe  is  a  Constant  Miracle. — If  by 

miracles  are  meant  events  due  to  the  immediate 
agency  of  Omnipotent  Goodness,  the  material  world 
of  Spiritual  Realism  is  a  constant  miracle.  All  that 
happens,  except  what  is  due  to  the  free  agency  of 
finite  persons,  morally  responsible  for  their  own 
actions,  is  the  immediate  issue  of  miraculous 
action.  '  Nothing  can  be  more  evident  than  the 
existence  of  God,  who  is  intimately  present  to 
our  minds,  producing  in  them  all  that  variety  of 
78 


GOD,  OR  THE  UNIVERSAL  MIND 

sensations  which  continually  affect  us ;  on  whom 
we  have  an  absolute  and  entire  dependence,  in 
short,  '  in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being.'  But  an  objector  may  say.  Hath  Natn^re 
no  share  in  the  production  of  natural  things,  and 
must  all  be  ascribed  to  the  immediate  and  sole 
operation  of  God  ?  I  answer,  If  by  Nature  is 
meant  only  the  visible  series  of  effects  or  sensa- 
tions imprinted  on  our  minds  according  to 
certain  fixed  and  general  laws,  then  it  is  plain 
that  Nature  taken  in  this  sense  cannot  produce 
anything  at  all.  But  if  by  Nature  is  meant 
some  Being  distinct  from  God,  as  well  as  from 
the  laws  of  nature  and  things  perceived  by  sense, 
then  I  must  confess  the  word  is  to  me  an  empty 
sound  without  any  intelligible  meaning  annexed 
to  it;  a  vain  chimera  introduced  by  those  heathens 
who  had  not  just  notions  of  the  omnipresence 
and  infinite  perfection  of  God.'  ^  Nature,  in  short, 
is  a  divine  miracle,  not  an  independent  agent. 

Special  Miracles. — This  constant  miracle  of  the 
universe  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  occasional 
occurrence  of  events  that  are  inexplicable  under 
the  rules  of  the  divine  order  as  thus  far  discovered 
by  man.  If  the  material  world  exists  for  the 
sake  of  persons,  physical  events,  unaccountable 

'  Principles,  sec.  149,  150. 

79 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

by  our  limited  intelligence,  yet  in  harmony  with 
the  supreme  order,  may  occur;  it  may  be,  as 
means  of  calling  human  attention  to  deeper  and 
truer  spiritual  revelations  of  God  than  man  could 
otherwise  realise.  '  Special  miracles '  of  this  sort 
are  recognised  by  Berkeley  as  at  least  '  probable,' 
while  he  dismisses  a  jpriori  reasons  against 
their  occurrence  as  unreasonable.  '  Probable 
arguments  are  for  him  a  sufficient  ground 
of  faith '  in  '  unaccountable  events '  that  are 
associated  with  revelations  of  God  which  might 
otherwise  have  remained  dormant  in  the  indi- 
vidual. '  Who  ever  supposed,'  he  asks,  '  that 
scientific  proofs  were  necessary  to  make  a  Chris- 
tian ?  It  will  be  sufficient  if  such  analogy 
appears  between  the  dispensations  of  grace  and 
nature,  as  may  make  it  probable  (although 
much  should  be  unaccountable  in  both)  to 
r  suppose  them  derived  from  the  same  author.'  ^ 
I  The  last  sentence  curiously  anticipates  Butler's 
]'?  argument  in  his  Analogy,  published  four  years 
'  after  those  words  appeared  in  the  Minute  Philo- 
sopher of  Berkeley.  But  it  was  left  unelaborated 
and  unapplied  by  the  author  of  the  Minute 
Philosopher. 
Revelation  of  the  Universal    Spirit  in  the 

1  Alciphron,  or  The  Minute  Philosojjher,  Dial.  vi.  sec.  31. 
80 


GOD,  OR  THE  UNIVERSAL  MIND 

Cosmos  and  in  Christ.  —  The  more  articulate 
revelation  of  the  Universal  Spirit  in  and  through 
Christ  ultimately  appeals  to  the  same  inevitable 
presuppositions  out  of  which  optimist  theistic 
faith  in  the  moral  rightness  and  perfect  goodness 
of  the  Supreme  Power  emerges.  Hence  the 
response  of  the  Spirit  in  man  to  the  assurance 
that '  God  is  love/  having  no  pleasure  in  the  death 
of  the  wicked,  but  rather  that  he  should  turn 
from  his  wickedness  and  live.  So  that  the 
ultimate  realisation  of  goodness  in  all  embodied 
spirits — not  for  their  merits,  but  for  its  own 
sake — may  be  taken  as  the  end  towards  which 
progressing  humanity  is  under  God  slowly  advanc- 
ing. We  have  found  this  faith  and  hope  latent 
even  in  the  universal  trust  in  the  credibility 
of  experience,  and  in  the  scientific  assumption  of 
constant  order  in  nature — reinforced  under  the 
claim  of  a  more  articulate  revelation,  by  its 
experienced  adaptation  to  the  moral  needs  of 
man,  and  to  the  limitations  of  human  intelli- 
gence. For  is  not  a  perfect  man  the  highest 
moral  conception  of  God  that  man  can  rise  to  ? 
Does  not  this  give  to  God  in  Christ  a  unique 
place  in  the  history  of  mankind  ?  He  has  called 
forth,  in  an  unexampled  degree,  the  latent  faith 
in  the  moral  perfection  of  the  Universal  Spirit 
F  8i 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

that  is  involved  in  the  trustworthiness  of  external 
nature — especially  when  the  evolution  of  the 
material  world  is  recognised,  as  by  Berkeley, 
under  his  doctrine  of  the  total  impotence  of 
matter,  to  be  due  to  the  immediate  agency  of 
God. 

Further  development  of  Spiritual  Realism. — 
Want  of  space  forbids  me  to  pursue  suggestions  of 
other  ways  in  which  Spiritual  Realism  admits  of 
development  and  application.  It  remains,  in  con- 
clusion, to  cast  an  eye  back  upon  our  past  journey. 

Retrospect 

Berkeley's  Distinctive  Principle.  —  We  have 

found  the  distinctive  principle  of  Berkeley's 
Realism  in  the  truth,  to  himself  evident,  that  the 
material  world  has  its  being  and  agency  in  Spirit. 
In  itself  it  is  wholly  impotent,  and  finally  depen- 
dent for  its  seeming  agency  upon  the  Universal 
Mind.  Its  constant  transformations,  on  which 
our  embodied  lives  depend,  are  accordingl}'^  be- 
lieved to  be  cosmical  and  interpretable,  not  chaotic 
and  uninterpretable ;  the  cosmos  being  due  to  the 
constant  activity  of  the  all-pervading  omnipotent 
Spirit.  This  at  least  is  the  deepest  and  truest 
ultimate  conception  of  Infinite  Power  that  is 
83 


KETROSPECT 

available  for  man,  inadequate  as  it  must  be  to  the 
divine  or  infinite  Reality.     So  far  Berkeley. 

The  Moral  Character  of  the  Universal  Spirit. 
— But  what  of  the  moral  character  of  the  Univer- 
sal Spirit  ?     Spiritual  Existence  and  Omnipotence 
do  not  carry  us  far,  unless  the  spiritual  Reality 
is  morally  perfect.     Berkeley  does   not  help  us 
much  at  this  critical  stage.     We  find  ourselves  in 
a  universe  in  which  the  physical  cosmos,  moved 
by  the  Universal  Spirit,  often  takes  the  appearance 
of  moral   indifference,  in  the  seeming   cruelties 
perpetrated  under  its  evolution;  and  the  embodied 
spirits   on   this  planet   are  morally  far  short  of 
the  ideal  man.   What  must  be  the  moral  character 
of  the  Omnipotent  Spirit  who  is  revealed  through 
a  universe   like  this  ?      Is  moral  perfection  pre- 
sent  in   this   revelation,  or  does  it  mean  moral 
indifference,    or    even    moral    imperfection    and 
limited  power  ? 

Our  Absolute  Security.  —  Unless  we  are  to 
subside  into  universal  pessimist  doubt,  we  must 
presuppose,  in  the  face  of  these  ominous  facts, 
that  we  are  in  a  universe  that  is  fit  to  be  reasoned 
about — a  succession  of  calculable  changes,  so  that 
we  can  have  experience  and  science,  and  can 
forecast  our  way  with  more  or  less  reasonable 
confidence  in  proportion  to  our  intellectual  pro- 

83 


BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM 

gress.  Is  not  our  only  absolute  security  for  this, 
the  faith  that  the  directing  Spirit  is  morally 
perfect,  and  omnipotent — omnipotent,  that  is  to 
say,  within  the  limit  of  non-contradiction,  for  even 
Omnipotence '  cannot  lie,'  and  cannot  make  things 
that  are  equal  to  the  same  thing  unequal  to  one 
another  ? 

The  Final  Alternative — Unless  then  it  can  be 
shown  that  the  ominous  signs  presented  by  the 
universe  demonstrably  contradict  perfect  good- 
ness in  the  Universal  Power,  are  we  not  obliged, 
by  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  alternative  of 
universal  pessimist  doubt,  to  accept  in  faith  and 
hope  the  moral  perfection  of  the  Supreme  ?  Have 
we  not,  in  the  moral  discipline  and  educative 
influence  of  physical  nature,  at  least  a  possible 
explanation  of  its  supposed  cruelty  and  injustice; 
while  the  risks  involved  in  the  existence  and 
independent  activity  of  moral  agents,  thus  respon- 
sible for  their  acts,  may  sufficiently  account  for 
present  manifestations  of  evil  under  Theistic 
Optimism  ?  If  Nature  is  practically  trustworthy, 
and  fit  to  be  scientifically  reasoned  about,  the 
Omnipotent  Spirit  immanent  in  it  must  be  per- 
fectly good  and  design  the  goodness  of  all.  This 
is  final  faith. 


84 


A  SHORT  LIST  OF  BOOKS  BEARING 
ON  THE  SUBJECT 

1.  The  Collected  Works  of  Berkeley,  edited  with  Annotations 

and  Dissertations,  by  Professor  Campbell  Fraser.     3  vols. 
Oxford:  Clarendon  Press,  1871. 

2.  Second    Edition    of    the    above,   amended    by   Professor 

Campbell  Fraser.     4  vols.     Oxford,  1901. 

3.  Life  and  Letters  of  Berkeley,  by  Professor  Campbell  Fraser. 

1  vol.     Oxford,  1871. 

4.  Annotated  Selections  from  Berkeley,  by  the  same  Author. 

Fifth  Edition.     Oxford,  1899. 

6.  Berkeley,  by  the  same  Author.      Second  Edition.      Edin- 
burgh, 1903. 

6.  Berkeley  and  Btiman  Knowledge,   by  Professor   Krantt. 

University  of  Pennsylvania,  1874. 

7.  Jhnde  stir  la  Vie  et  les  CEuvres  Philosophiques  de  Berkeley. 

A.  Penjon.     1878. 

8.  Berlceley  and  Positivism,  by  St.  George  Stock.     1879. 

9.  Essays  and  Addresses :  Berkeley,  by  the  Right  Honourable 

A.  J.  Balfour.     1893. 


85 


DATES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  BERKELEY 


First  Period 

Birth  in  Co.  Kilkenny, 

In  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  .... 
Publication  of  New  Theory  of  Vision,     . 

„  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge, 

„  Three  Dialogues, 


1685 

1700-13 

1709 

1710 

1713 


Second  Period 

In  London,  France,  and  Italy,         ....  1713-20 

Publication  of  De  Motn, 1720 

In  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 1721-24 

Made  Dean  of  Derry, 1724 

The  Bermuda  Project  and  Negotiations  in  London,  1724-28 

Departure  for  America,  ......  1728 

In  Rhode  Island, 1728-31 

Publication  of  Alciphron,  or  the  Minute  Philoso])her,  1732 

„  Vindication  of  the  Theory  of  Vision,  1733    0^1 


Third  Period 

Made  Bishop  of  Cloyne, 

Distress  in  Ireland  and  The  Querist, 

Publication  of  Siris, 

Departure  for  Oxford,     . 

Death  at  Oxford,    .... 


U^ 


1734 

1735-38 
1744 
1752 
1753    J 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  Constable,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 
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